Sawyer Formspring Q&A

Obsidian's Josh Sawyer has a Formspring (a website where people can post anonymous questions), and I've been following it while asking some questions. A few interesting ones have come up lately, and I thought I'd select a few to share:

You can join in on the Q&A at http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer but if you spam him so much he stops answering I will call the llama god down on you.

 

Again this dumbfuck comparison of combat with minigames.

Controlling your characters during combat DOES NOT in any way negate skills they way minigames do.

That's awesome man. I'll be sure to play your "RPGs".

 

Current ones do, but he elaborates that he's talking about the general principle of minigames. That it's possible to develop a minigame that doesn't negate skills the way they do now.

 

He's both right and wrong about that last bit, in my opinion: both player strategy AND die rolls should dictate success or failure. Different paths to sneak upon a target should have different difficulties such as number of patrolling enemies, types of patrol routes, darkness, noisy surfaces, etc.

Imagine this: you're in control of a thief sneaking around some ogre caves; you left the rest of the party staying behind while you scout ahead for traps and enemies. After deactivating a couple of devices (and due to the amount of skill points you've invested) you're given the option to rig them so that only enemies can spring them. You do so, and move ahead only to find three ogres discussing what to do with the upstairs' cell's prisoner over a table. The room is quite dark and you manage to get near the monsters without getting noticed and pickpocket them. The game makes it so that all the items they're carrying can be pickpocketed: you rob them of their clubs (a lot easier since they're not equipped) and medium health potions. You take a few steps back and fire an arrow against one of them, dealing backstab damage and nearly killing the thing. They try to reach for their weapons but notice they're gone so they start running for you. The three of them chase your thief down the corridor, activate the traps and the wounded one gets killed, the others suffering from low morale as they find their health potions are no longer with them. Badly wounded and angered, they make a run for your thief who at the nearest turn you decided to hide in the darkness. They pass without noticing him and when they reach the rest of your party they get massacred as they're lacking weapons and healing. What would have been quite a tough fight necessitating quite a few reloads has become a rather trivial matter.

As you can see, stealth was never done properly in any RPG, ever.

 

The point is that minigames arent hard, so when you don't have resources to skip them you have to deal with instead of challenge. I suppose it's a good incentive, though.

 

There are a bunch more questions he answers, btw. I only picked about half or 1/3.

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/profile.p ... ile&u=2287

newfagsetc

 

hmmm. i thought that's what he was saying.

 

Who the fuck is "Lord Gamerson"?

 

the deity who created games?

 

it is. 1eyedking just fails at reading due to his disability.

 

Depends. Say, Dungeon Lords had a click-matching-buttons-in-time minigame for lockpick. The stronger a lock, the more symbols to match and the faster timer went out. Now... the higher your lockpick skill, the slower timer goes out. If you have +lockpick tools, it is slower yet. And then there is a spell to slow down time which does affect lockpicking as well. No skill negation whatsoever there.

(nonetheless, stupid puzzle games DO suck, and no amount of skill-related embellishment make them any less of an aberration)

 

Depends. Is it possible to open the most difficult locks without putting anything in the lockpick skill? If it is, then it's still negation...

Well, duh, that's another thing he fails to realize: it's fucking boring doing the same mini-game over and over again.

 

It's clearly not. As with everything Sawyer, what he says is very different to what he applies it to. He says he's in favor of stand-alone stealth, and instead of mentioning a system like mine, he goes "LOL Oblivion stealth > Infinity engine", which means almost zero skill checks, overpowered backstabbing, no dynamic stealth detection, etc.

Funny since Alpha Protocol features an invisibility button. And Neverwinter Nights 2 had IE sneaking. This is Josh "Goddamit Parker why are you forcing all of these stupid systems into our games, fuck you melee is going to be about frantically tapping the letter E" Sawyer we're talking about: just another dumbwit developer who's a total poser.

 

I am fairly sure Obsidian have more guys responsible for design than just Sawyer and Parker...

 

I'm arguing with Sawyer about what constitutes an RPG, Lol.

 

Post the discussion here. Please don't spare the details.

 

Okay. Bold is him.

If the central narrative is meaningfully interactive, I would classify it as an RPG. That is, I consider interactive storytelling to be the primary defining characteristic of RPGs.

Can you elaborate on why contemporary RPGs are defined as interactive narrative? IMO RPGs have always been the same - dependent on the player's development of a character's stats. E.g. AP would have been enhanced as an RPG if there were dialogue skills.

Would you consider Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to be an RPG? How about Devil May Cry 4? Ninja Gaiden? Call of Duty 4? All of these games feature the gaining of experience points (or equivalent) to unlock new abilities.

Advancement of character abilities is not unique to RPGs -- certainly not in the 21st century, anyway.

Most of the criticisms of AP have to do with the elements that aren't role-playing related. Personally, I don't think the DSS system would be improved with the addition of dialogue skills.

I would consider the xp aspects of the games you mentioned to be RPG systems, yes. But they are first and foremost action games, as your twitch-skill trumps the strategic planning from developing stats. Whereas in a "true" RPG, this is not the case.

Would you classify Oblivion and Mass Effect as "true" RPGs? Both are games in which your ability to actually aim attacks and time input are the primary determining factors in landing hits/doing damage.

(Someone else) In response to your Oblivion/Mass Effect question, I don't know why we have a black and white view of it. Do you think there can be a gradient scale of "RPG-ness" on which Morrowind would be more of an RPG than Oblivion, but both are RPGs.

They don't have to be black and white views, but if you're going to classify things based on criteria, those criteria should be consistent. The previous question declared, pretty emphatically, that Castlevania: SotN, DMC4, et al. were action games with RPG elements. Given Mass Effect 1/2s primary reliance on player skill in combat, what makes those games RPGs and not action games with RPG elements?

I see ME as it's classified, an Action RPG. Course, there's a very blurry gradient between an ARPG and an action game w/RPG elements. But it's clear (to me) what the RPG elements are. Oblivion, diplomatically speaking, is not very good at being an RPG.

Overlapping the mechanics of Mass Effect and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, what are the elements of ME that make it an RPG and R6V2 not an RPG?

I forget what I responded to that.

 

What a hypocrite. In my inexpert opinion, people should just use more descriptive terms to describe these things.

 

"Roleplaying Game" is a very loose description, one that been abused by marketing departments.

Take Deus Ex, it was not marketed in any way as a RPG yet now Deus Ex: Japanese Canadian miking is marketed as a "action" RPG and yet it will be less of a RPG that the original was.

The "definition" of RPG seems to change in the industry depending on who you are talking to and right now its "flavor of the decade" as if somehow a "Action RPG" is somewhat superior to a RPG, if they can sneak in the "RPG" label they will do it

With that said "central narrative is meaningfully interactive" does not make it a RPG, if that was true then NO Final Fantasy would be a RPG (and they clearly are) as well most jRPG would also not fit that description.

 

Not entirely accurate. The back of the packaging states it's "The game that incorporates the best elements of role playing, action, adventure, and first person shooter genres." At least it's honest about being a hybrid. I was annoyed when I saw some magazine scan claim DE3 had "surprisingly satisfying shooting for a non-shooter." If it had used "shooter hybrid" or "role playing shooter" that would have been okay, but "non-shooter" is an utterly dumb description of a game where you can shoot a lot of things.

Yeah, in my experience on other forums, a lot of people don't consider something a "real" video game unless there's player dexterity involved because otherwise it's "just a stat-choosing guessing game that almost plays itself." As far as they're concerned, games where you can only use your character's skills and abilities are a relic that belong in the past. Wanna swing that sword themselves without stat-based restrictions, see the fear in the orc's eye and so on. Having a more-personalized experience with an action-adventure is fun, but I resent it being considered a replacement.

 

i asked if he agreed with me that dragon age is a bad novel, a bad movie and a bad game combined into an unimpressive whole.

 

Well, classifying an actual game is always going to be difficult and result in loose classification, because implementation is going to always meld elements from different genres. BUT even with the marketing department abuse, even with mainstream gamers coming up with stupid definitions, I think what constitutes an "RPG element" to be still pretty clear - that is, having stats that matter and being able to develop those stats. And an "RPG" happens when your development of those stats affects gameplay as - or more - significantly than your skill in other areas (your tactics in a turn based RPG, your twitch skill in an ARPG).

This "definition" of an RPG element proves true for all types of RPGs, from JRPGs to ARPGs to "true" RPGs. In all of them, a level 1 character is NOT going to beat a level 50 character.