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Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #44: Kevin on Production, Adam on Fettles, Colin on Lore

Trip

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Hey, ksaun, I love that you're engaging with the topic :)

(Though we're also trying to make the quests/events that aren't time-based not feel like they would be time-based.)

I didn't quite catch that. Are you making them feel more urgent or less or is it something else entirely? Anyway, great idea to include time pressure (or just, you know, the concept of time, which is next to non-existent in most RPGs). I hope it's a successful experiment. By the way, have you worked out what sort of overhead timelines add to the vanilla way of handling things? And it seems you'll be well over the 500k word mark 'till you're done - great news :)
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I think he's saying they should not feel urgent, to avoid LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE ("you must save the kingdom before the dark horde invades!" oh but actually you can go picking flowers for months and nothing will happen)
 

Trip

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On the other hand, they should feel urgent enough (maybe not in such a critical sense) that the player wants to engage with them. Or maybe appealing enough to pull the player towards them. (Some of them exclusive of one another, completion of one changing state in another, the whole honeycomb structure and all that.) Also, I gather LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE is one of those phrases in perma-caps, right? :D
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
On the other hand, they should feel urgent enough (maybe not in such a critical sense) that the player wants to engage with them. Or maybe appealing enough to pull the player towards them. (Some of them exclusive of one another, completion of one changing state in another, the whole honeycomb structure and all that.) Also, I gather LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE is one of those phrases in perma-caps, right? :D

Maybe, but you have to be careful or the player might confuse them with the tasks that actually are urgent. At least in a Bethesda game the player eventually figures out that nothing is urgent so they can filter out that stuff.
 

Trip

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Maybe, but you have to be careful or the player might confuse them with the tasks that actually are urgent

Sure, but if content from a critical path quest could mess with the non-urgent stuff you're mired in, that would be a decent, worldbolstering wake-up call. I'd like to see that, preferably in stages of escalation, rather than getting the equivalent of a flashing "URGENT/NON-URGENT" sign at the start of each quest.
 
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I think he's saying they should not feel urgent, to avoid LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE ("you must save the kingdom before the dark horde invades!" oh but actually you can go picking flowers for months and nothing will happen)

If that's the case then how does anything "earth-shattering" or monumental happen in this game?

[Delayed quests] don't involve earth-shattering reactivity (too risky for this)

Unless all the earth shattering stuff is kept ludonarratively consistent with timewasting I suppose. ;)
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I think he's saying they should not feel urgent, to avoid LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE ("you must save the kingdom before the dark horde invades!" oh but actually you can go picking flowers for months and nothing will happen)

If that's the case then how does anything "earth-shattering" or monumental happen in this game?
Based on player choices instead of resting habits would be my first guess.
 
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I think he's saying they should not feel urgent, to avoid LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE ("you must save the kingdom before the dark horde invades!" oh but actually you can go picking flowers for months and nothing will happen)

If that's the case then how does anything "earth-shattering" or monumental happen in this game?
Based on player choices instead of resting habits would be my first guess.

I know, my point is that implementing monumental events in a crpg main questline without making it ludonarratively dissonant through timewasting seems impossible (e.g. how would you do that with the threat of the mutant killing virus in FO2, or whatever other plot that would serve as a second example to support the point I'm making). Monumentality seems hard to achieve without urgency.

He's already said there won't be anything too severe a la the Mutant town invasions in FO1, so either you have a story without monumental events, or ludonarrative dissonance or.... <insert brilliant innovation>?
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Monumental events can be un-urgent. The onset of the Battle of Hoover Dam in FO:NV - you eventually realize that itz coming but it doesn't feel that urgent.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I know, my point is that implementing monumental events in a crpg main questline without making it ludonarratively dissonant through timewasting seems impossible (e.g. how would you do that with the threat of the mutant killing virus in FO2, or whatever other plot that would serve as a second example to support the point I'm making). Monumentality seems hard to achieve without urgency.

He's already said there won't be anything too severe a la the Mutant town invasions in FO1, so either you have a story without monumental events, or ludonarrative dissonance or.... <insert brilliant innovation>?
I'm pretty sure the structure of TToN is going to be such that timewasting in the Fallout sense is not a common way to play the game.

PST just had some shadows attack you now and then if you took too long, and that seemed to be good enough for it.

Edit: Also, the monumental changes can be player driven. You do X and then something awesome monumental happens. Like a city is on the brink of civil war, but one politician is just barely holding it together. You murder him and then it starts, but as long as you don't, he keeps holding things together.
 
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Monumental events can be un-urgent. The onset of the Battle of Hoover Dam in FO:NV - you eventually realize that itz coming but it doesn't feel that urgent.

Can't say I've played the game, but are sure that lack of urgency is intentional and not a function of the fact that you're constantly dicking around instead of focussing on this supposedly monumental event?
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Monumental events can be un-urgent. The onset of the Battle of Hoover Dam in FO:NV - you eventually realize that itz coming but it doesn't feel that urgent.

Can't say I've played the game, but are sure that lack of urgency is intentional and not a function of the fact that you're constantly dicking around instead of focussing on this supposedly monumental event?

In the first half of the game, you're told that both sides are holding back, suffering from all sorts of logistics issues, etc. At some point, veteran troops start appearing and you're told that shit is going to hit the fan soon, but generally by then you're not far from activating the endgame sequence.

In theory, you could play the game in such a way that it begins to strain credibility, but it works well enough. Just the first example off the top of my head.

But yeah, as tuluse says you can also have a game where all monumental events are player-initiated. Heck, it could even railroad you through some of them. That's okay, this is a Torment game - PS:T railroaded you through story beats too. Curst always fell into Carceri due to your freeing of Trias. That's pretty monumental.
 

ksaun

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By the way, have you worked out what sort of overhead timelines add to the vanilla way of handling things? And it seems you'll be well over the 500k word mark 'till you're done - great news :)

That's an interesting question. It's hard to quantify. From a technical perspective, it's nothing especially fancy -- it's just a flavor of reactivity. I think the majority of extra effort is in the area design process, and depending upon how well that's done, there could be more burden on area implementation and also QA. We haven't fully realized those costs yet.

But I think its impact is more in the trade-off against other things -- as I'm sure you realize, we have many reasons to keep the total number of states as low as we can for any given quest. (I don't actually mean "as low as we can" as this would be at odds with goals of high reactivity, immersion, etc. So I mean more that we want to make sure that the quest states we do include are worth the effort they require.)

I'm wording that awkwardly, but basically: if we increase overall complexity because time matters, then we have to simplify in some other way so that everything is manageable. When designing a quest with a time dependence, the designer needs to figure out how to keep the overall complexity (of implementation) reasonable and this takes more thought and/or requires "compromises" in terms of other sorts of potential reactivity.

For example, TTON quests tend to have singular initial states -- they are designed so that you acquire them through one specific event or NPC. Say there's a murder investigation. You might receive it only through talking with someone who wants you to solve the murder. Perhaps the corpse is placed in a room that's initially "blocked" by the quest NPC so that it's not possible to find it first (i.e., until we know you must have received the quest already). (This is assuming the situation were such that it would feel weird if you could find the corpse without that starting the quest. Other design solutions are also possible.) The more starting points a quest has, the more complicated it is to handle all routes well. So limiting the starting states saves implementation/writing complexity that we can then invest in other types of reactivity. (This was a conscious (if not ubiquitous) design decision for TTON because we feel other types of reactivity are more impactful (for this game).)

(Aside: How the timeline events came up was somewhat accidental. In fleshing out the design/implementation of the Bloom, Jesse Farrell came up with a one-off idea for an event and this inspired the larger system, which was very compatible with how we were already planning to approach the passage of time. Though we were concerned about the possible increase the scope, we felt it was manageable and "prototyped" in the Bloom.

(So the feature risks feeling a little "tacked on" there, as it wasn't deeply integrated into the initial design. But I think few would notice this (except that I'm admitting it here =) ) -- we've iterated on the Bloom enough that they fit better, and there'll be more iteration later as well. Meanwhile, the timeline events are quite thoroughly integrated into some of the areas we designed later, such as Sagus Cliffs. We'll see how all unfolds, but so far it looks like it will feel pretty natural in these places.)


Oh, yes, we'll be well over the 500K word mark. (I'm not entirely sure how much this is a good or bad thing. ;) We have no specific word "target," just projections based upon the completed edited/revised work.)
 

Trip

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That's an interesting question. It's hard to quantify. From a technical perspective, it's nothing especially fancy -- it's just a flavor of reactivity. I think the majority of extra effort is in the area design process, and depending upon how well that's done, there could be more burden on area implementation and also QA. We haven't fully realized those costs yet.

Well, I think it would be some very useful data to have when you have it. Some sort of well-implemented concept of passing time is one thing where - for future games, possibly, - you could really up the RPG, uh, game.

For example, TTON quests tend to have singular initial states -- they are designed so that you acquire them through one specific event or NPC. Say there's a murder investigation. You might receive it only through talking with someone who wants you to solve the murder. Perhaps the corpse is placed in a room that's initially "blocked" by the quest NPC so that it's not possible to find it first (i.e., until we know you must have received the quest already). (This is assuming the situation were such that it would feel weird if you could find the corpse without that starting the quest. Other design solutions are also possible.) The more starting points a quest has, the more complicated it is to handle all routes well. So limiting the starting states saves implementation/writing complexity that we can then invest in other types of reactivity. (This was a conscious (if not ubiquitous) design decision for TTON because we feel other types of reactivity are more impactful (for this game).)

Re the bold text: Again, possibly with a view to future projects, but I'd love to see a bit less rigidly defined, uh, quest-situations in a game. You just find something interesting and then find out that you can ask/tell people about it. In the above example, you find a corpse and you decide to go to the local authorities, which is one of the places where this dialogue option is permitted. (With a random stranger on the street it might not be.) You report it and get an array of possible answers, from "We'll take care of it." to "And who did you say you were.", to "Umm, yeah, we'll see what we can do.." + sending a bloodhound on your heels to scare/beat you up. Or you could mention the corpse somewhere else where it makes sense.

That way, the start itself acts as a clue to the next step. Receiving clues from more than one place makes the whole thing more robust, gives it a more free-form feeling, and it's less likely for the player to just miss it altogether; and generally, piquing the player's interest in, say, 3 ways instead of just handing them a task, could possibly take very little additional implementation, by just making NPCs from other quests moonlight a little biy. Bob the mall cop could be mainly involved in quest X, but he could know something about quest Y too, just enough and written interestingly enough to propel the PC along the investigation. The stuff the player needs to know to make progress would be limited, there'd just be different ways of learning it. (+ as few or as many additional state changes hinging on how the player learned the information.) For me, at least, that would greatly reduce the "errand runner" feeling, and it would somewhat integrate the game-stuff that exists specifically for me with the larger world-stuff that could care less about me.

(Aside: How the timeline events came up was somewhat accidental. In fleshing out the design/implementation of the Bloom, Jesse Farrell came up with a one-off idea for an event and this inspired the larger system, which was very compatible with how we were already planning to approach the passage of time. Though we were concerned about the possible increase the scope, we felt it was manageable and "prototyped" in the Bloom.
(So the feature risks feeling a little "tacked on" there, as it wasn't deeply integrated into the initial design. But I think few would notice this (except that I'm admitting it here =) ) -- we've iterated on the Bloom enough that they fit better, and there'll be more iteration later as well. Meanwhile, the timeline events are quite thoroughly integrated into some of the areas we designed later, such as Sagus Cliffs. We'll see how all unfolds, but so far it looks like it will feel pretty natural in these places.)

Well, you've already stated less breadth, more depth, and the timeline concept sounds like more depth, so I'd say it's a good decision :)

Oh, yes, we'll be well over the 500K word mark. (I'm not entirely sure how much this is a good or bad thing. ;) We have no specific word "target," just projections based upon the completed edited/revised work.)

Sure it's a good thing, for your target audience, which is the audience that mostly matters.
 

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