Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

For me, reloading represents losing the game, and having to redo things in order to win. If I play a game and don't end up reloading, there is no possibility of losing, and hence no challenge at all, like the computer game equivalent of taking a walk in the park. It is a dumbed down experience, streamlined for morons.

 

Honest question:

Why exactly do we give a damn about people who reload during fights in Fallout as long as it takes to get a lucky crit-induced flawless victory? Because they get steam achievements for it or something?

 

If they wanted to innovate the genre, they should promote their game as such.

If they wanted to make a return to the old way of making games, they should promote their game as such.

They did the latter. Now why do you think this is? Probably because people trust their love of the IE-games more than they trust a random game designer with a doubtful resume and his crazy ideas.

But fuck it, this discussion is as pointless as it ever was. I hope you're right.

 

I think there is a difference between reloading because you didn't know what was going to hit you and reloading because the way you played sucks. I think Sawyer is trying to get rid of the former but keep the latter.

Man Infinitron he answers ALL your questions. What are you guys buddy buddy?

 

Grunker:

Where am I being 'apologetic'? I thought the 50% no-miss system was pointless and a devolution, and said so; I think the recent compromise is nice, and said so. Did I say nobody should criticise Sawyer? No, I make fun of people who believe he is some kind of left-wing revolutionary whose political radicalism infuses his design with Evil, or people who flip their top at every single change without providing good rationale. And no, that doesn't represent everyone in this thread (or I wouldn't bother posting). So isn't it you making strawmen when you're talking about blind non-criticism?

Anyway, let's talk about the actual substance of the argument, which I imagine is your goal as well. I may be wrong but my impression is people are picking up far too much from Sawyer's tone - i.e. that Sawyer believes the IE games were Broken and he will Fix them into the Great RTwP Game. What I see, substantially, is that he is building a new system from ground up due to the lack of D&D, and when he does so, he's not trying to recreate IE D&D without the license, e.g. change 'Constitution' into 'Hardiness' and call it a day, he's trying to make various changes that he believes to be improvements. I find that just fine, because I think that's the same as BG2 changing the area exploration design from BG1, or IWD2 implementing 3E rules, or Torment introducing an immortal protagonist that is 'trained' into three different classes. Every IE game was different, and every future IE game that was never made would have been different; that's what defines a style. As long as these changes are (1) sensible and improve gameplay, and (2) do not change the fundamentals of an IE spirit or style, there is no problem.

That's why I say it's important for people (not you, in general) to provide their rationale as to why they think health/stamina or no-miss would violate their definition of the IE spirit, and change the fundamentals of how the combat feels. My own take was that the original 50% no-miss system was in danger of doing so, because that's not just a quantitative change but a qualitative one, it makes things less instinctive, it can encourage grinding tactics, etc. My opinion is also that miss/glance/hit is not just a compromise between the two positions; it is actually a solution that remains in the original IE camp and then makes a minor improvement, because the general principle (you hit or you miss) is now the core again, but it is simply variegated further with glancing blows. I see that as an improvement that makes the combat more complex while retaining the feel of IE games, which was not the case with the original proposition.

That's the kind of rationale I have for my opinions, and I think that's the kind of conversation that would be productive to have.

 

It is kind of interesting to compare our demands to those of a publisher. The publisher has a certain expectation of what game it wants, just like we do. When that conflicts with what the devs want to make, the publisher pushes back and uses what leverage it has to try and get the devs to make that game.

The difference is that the publisher wants a game that fits its idea of profitable, while we want a game that fits our idea of IE-like (or "old-school" or whatever frame of reference is used). It'll be interesting to see how the different motives have an effect on the compromises the devs make.

 

Huh? Who even does this? Who reloads pointlessly for no reason? I don't reload after fighting a wolf because it did one damage to my character. And if someone is retarded enough to play that way, why should you get your panties tied up???

It seems Obsidian's approach is: Someone will probably reload if his character dies! Let's effectively remove death from the game. Oh wait - what if someone reloads after he misses an attack? Well, let's remove missing from the game! What if someone reloads after taking damage? Let's implement regenerating health! Now we have a game that NOBODY can lose, no matter what they do! Now they can focus on romancing halfling transexuals and dwarven paedophiles!

 

No complaints from me Infinitron. It's great that you're asking questions and reaping the brofists. More info for us to quibble about here on the dex.

Roshan, I think you're mischaracterizing his intentions. Many people played the old IE games with rest-spam. If you did so and always had a fully-healed party then some battles would be fairly easy for you. Yes, obviously many people (like me) didn't rest spam after each battle. So you have two different play styles when it comes to battles. Then when fights are designed, which play style do you consider? If you take the first one as the norm then some battles can become impossible and resting becomes really another name for regenerating health. If you take the second play style as the norm, then the first group of people will say "battles were easy in this game."

So there are a few design choices you can make: do not allow people to camp everywhere, or make autoregen the norm and so your health for each battle is defined by how much stamina you have. Josh is making both of these design choices because he wants everyone to be on the same playing field. When you've made rest-spam a consideration then you can build challenging battles with this mechanic in mind.

Yes, if he suddenly implemented regenerating health and used exactly the same combat structure and level design as in BG2, it would be crap. Because those games didn't take rest-spammers into account. What he's doing is saying, "OK we know some of you are rest-spammers. We don't want you guys rest-spamming after battles because the combat becomes cheesy. What we're going to do is give you these set of rules and make battles taking these rules into account. Now that we'll limited your 'cheese-style tactics' you have to figure out how to play better to pass this portion of the game."

 

I expect that the devs want/need to make a game that will make us throw more money at them for their next project. The effect this will have will indeed be interesting to see.

 

BG2 had superb combat because of very good class variety, very good itemisation and very good spell list; all of this resulting in a plethora of ways to overcome the very good encounters.

The inherent flaws of the infinity engine are an issue only in the other games because they lack the above stated qualities - some more than others.

I have the distinct impression there are a lot of fags here who made it through the game only on normal difficulty with tactics like "fighter smash", "mage cast fireball" and kiting. I do not value such fags' opinion and nor should Sawyer.

herp derp

 

For better or worse, Sawyer agrees with that:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=45102026&postcount=8320

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63091-josh-sawyer-on-miss-and-hit/page__st__140#entry1296448

I'm normally a live and let live sort of guy, but this sort of thing makes me fucking rage. I don't even know how to argue with this bullshit.

 

Sawyer has made a few concessions to players already. One is this whole "missing" thing, the others being "lootable everything" (swords armor from every enemy) and finally making turning off [tags] in conversations a toggle-able thing.

which is why Sawyer is making these design choices, I think. The casuals are all about cheese tactics. The non-casuals are about hardcore. Sawyer is trying to find a balance between the two. Put them both on the same playing field and then design challenge on the new field. The casuals will have their belowed "regen" and the hardcores will have difficult battles in the new arena. This is a slight mischaracterization, but I think it's approximately accurate.

 

It's funny to me that the casuals and the hardcores are both pissed off at Sawyer for his design choices. The hardcores want more merciless mechanics, the casuals want their cheese tactics still available to them. Everyone's mad. I think this kind of shows that Sawyer's on the right track. If you're pissing everyone off, then you're doing something right.

 

How are casuals about cheese tactics? Most likely they never even found them, in a game like BG2. If exploiting the game to its limit is not hardcore, I don't know what's it supposed to mean.