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Editorial Obsidian's JE Sawyer talks about fine tuning

DarkUnderlord

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Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment

JE Sawyer <a href="http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?s=53574df3bb53ebec5a37ce351855e0ab&automodule=blog&blogid=3&showentry=121">types some rambling, drunken words on Obsidian's Forum</a> about tuning RPGs:
<br>
<blockquote>At work, I am often directly involved in an aspect of game design that not all designers really deal with: system and content tuning. This is the process by which system rules and content are adjusted to produce a specific effect for the player. E.g. you want the player to feel like he/she really gains a great advantage when he/she gets the raccoon tail in Super Mario Brothers 3, so you space out the frequency of raccoon tail powerups and you make sure that the raccoon tail's flight powers allow access to useful/valuable areas.
<br>
<br>
RPGs are often difficult to tune for a few reasons:
<br>
<br>
* There are a lot of statistics
<br>
* Many of the statics are derived/connected to other statistics
<br>
* There are subsystems that govern access to various abilities (e.g. class systems, racial abilities, etc.) that create a player desire for egalitarianism/balance between those subsystems.
<br>
<br>
This won't all be coherent, but I'd like to write down a few basic rules that I have developed over time.
<br>
<br>
* Avoid allowing a base value to be modified by more than three inputs.
<br>
* From a single value, avoid deriving multiple values in different subsystems.
<br>
* Do not create drawbacks that are "opt-out" for the player if it still gives some benefit to the player.
<br>
* When making trade-offs between items/skills/abilities, those trade offs must actually feel different in application or the player's choice isn't very important.
<br>
* Show the player what he or she is getting, even if they don't necessarily understand how the underlying math works out.</blockquote>
<br>
I'll let you follow linky above to read the rules in detail.
 

MetalCraze

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RPGs are often difficult to tune for a few reasons:

* There are a lot of statistics
* Many of the statics are derived/connected to other statistics
* There are subsystems that govern access to various abilities (e.g. class systems, racial abilities, etc.) that create a player desire for egalitarianism/balance between those subsystems.

What an utter bullshit. If something as simple as this is "difficult" to Sawyer then he should stay away from RPGs. Seriously Obsidian went from mediocre to shit.
And what does he mean by "a lot of statistics"? The last game that had a reasonable number of them was Arcanum back in 2001 - something tells me he doesn't speak about games before that.
 

obediah

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What does he know about fine tuning? Evey game he has had any say over has been canceled or released long before the fine tuning stage.
 

Xor

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MetalCraze said:
RPGs are often difficult to tune for a few reasons:

* There are a lot of statistics
* Many of the statics are derived/connected to other statistics
* There are subsystems that govern access to various abilities (e.g. class systems, racial abilities, etc.) that create a player desire for egalitarianism/balance between those subsystems.

What an utter bullshit. If something as simple as this is "difficult" to Sawyer then he should stay away from RPGs. Seriously Obsidian went from mediocre to shit.
And what does he mean by "a lot of statistics"? The last game that had a reasonable number of them was Arcanum back in 2001 - something tells me he doesn't speak about games before that.

I know I'm entering into an exercise in futility by asking you this, skyway, but what the hell.

Why exactly is it bullshit? What is a 'reasonable' number of statistics? What makes you assume he isn't speaking about games before 2001?
 

OSK

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Sounds like damage control for AP being called "not RPG enough."
 

Ausir

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Sawyer is not working on AP. He's currently trying to fine tune the Fallout 3 mechanics for New Vegas. And you can find lots of examples of things that Sawyer says should be avoided in the very FO3 itself.
 

Lord Rocket

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All that is 100% fair enough. Especially the stuff about keeping it all fairly simple: I know this goes against Codexian received wisdom ('CRPGs can be more complex than PnP games!!!') and obviously a computer can keep track of a lot of variables but the player needs to be able to parse as much of it as possible too. And the designer, who is also a person (JUST BARELY HAHAHAHA), for that matter.
The rest is basically common sense.
 

bhlaab

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obediah said:
What does he know about fine tuning? Evey game he has had any say over has been canceled or released long before the fine tuning stage.

you realize that it's ideal for a development team to be thinking about game balance from the beginning right
 

obediah

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bhlaab said:
obediah said:
What does he know about fine tuning? Evey game he has had any say over has been canceled or released long before the fine tuning stage.

you realize that it's ideal for a development team to be thinking about game balance from the beginning right

Maybe you should go find out what "fine tuning" means before embarrassing yourself further.
 

Murk

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MetalCraze said:
What an utter bullshit. If something as simple as this is "difficult" to Sawyer then he should stay away from RPGs. Seriously Obsidian went from mediocre to shit.
And what does he mean by "a lot of statistics"? The last game that had a reasonable number of them was Arcanum back in 2001 - something tells me he doesn't speak about games before that.

Dude, what are you talking about -- Arcanum had a very simple system. It worked well and was one of its best features but it was still pretty friggin' simple, especially compared to something like the near PNP implementation of ToEE.
 

Deadeye Dragoon

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obediah said:
Maybe you should go find out what "fine tuning" means before embarrassing yourself further.

Maybe you should cite where Sawyer says this is "fine tuning" or that he's referring to a late-cycle "fine tuning stage".
 

obediah

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Deadeye Dragoon said:
obediah said:
Maybe you should go find out what "fine tuning" means before embarrassing yourself further.

Maybe you should cite where Sawyer says this is "fine tuning" or that he's referring to a late-cycle "fine tuning stage".

Holy Christ you people are morons.
 

bhlaab

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No, I get it. They figure out all the equations and design the systems and make a rough outline for xp distribution, then they just ignore that shit until the last 3 months of development.
 

thesheeep

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bhlaab said:
No, I get it. They figure out all the equations and design the systems and make a rough outline for xp distribution, then they just ignore that shit until the last 3 months of development.

In obediah's world, they do ;)
 

MetalCraze

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Mikayel said:
Dude, what are you talking about -- Arcanum had a very simple system. It worked well and was one of its best features but it was still pretty friggin' simple, especially compared to something like the near PNP implementation of ToEE.
Exactly! Yet Arcanum had lots of statistics. Not only main stats, but lots of skills, spells, craft system, items getting damaged etc plust a few feats - all of this is governed by stats and math. And ToEE aka DnD system is just as simple to understand even though it has lots of stats around. Games since then had even less amount of stats, complexity and math - even in recent DnD implementations.

Thus I don't understand why Sawyer says what he says. But such design philosopy surely won't help the dying patient aka Fallout New Reno.
 

obediah

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thesheeep said:
bhlaab said:
No, I get it. They figure out all the equations and design the systems and make a rough outline for xp distribution, then they just ignore that shit until the last 3 months of development.

In obediah's world, they do ;)

The sheep says bhlaab.

Are you guys so enamored with Sawyer that :whiteknightfag: is a reflex? or is the codex being over run by humourless old ladies? It wasn't even an insult to Sawyer, just an easy swipe at the unfortunate luck he's had in previous projects. It's wasn't even obscure or clever so I'm baffled at how you've managed to build some weird delusion where I've read the article, let alone commented on it's contents or made some statement with regards to software development.
 

Volourn

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"Games since then had even less amount of stats, complexity and math - even in recent DnD implementations."

DA has lots of stats. And, oh, how many D&D RPGs have there been since TOEE? Basiclaly just NWN2 which has just as many stats.

You, sir, are dumb. As per usual.



"Not only main stats, but lots of skills, spells, craft system, items getting damaged etc plust a few feats - all of this is governed by stats and math."

Boring.

Even ME had that. What a doofus you are. ARC and TOEE (even thoguh I like ARC and appreciate what TOEE did well) aren't special in this regard.
 

bhlaab

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obediah said:
thesheeep said:
bhlaab said:
No, I get it. They figure out all the equations and design the systems and make a rough outline for xp distribution, then they just ignore that shit until the last 3 months of development.

In obediah's world, they do ;)

The sheep says bhlaab.

Are you guys so enamored with Sawyer that :whiteknightfag: is a reflex? or is the codex being over run by humourless old ladies? It wasn't even an insult to Sawyer, just an easy swipe at the unfortunate luck he's had in previous projects. It's wasn't even obscure or clever so I'm baffled at how you've managed to build some weird delusion where I've read the article, let alone commented on it's contents or made some statement with regards to software development.

No, it was coming from the knowledge that a gigantic chunk of the time he spent on Van Buren was in revamping the systems and tweaking them constantly and that it was likely done from the very beginning. And I have a feeling that it's some of the first work that has been and will continue to be done on New Vegas.
In fact, he's well known for the constant iterations and fine tuning he does on his games which is why he wrote the article in the first place.

So it was more from a place in that your comment was dumb and I wanted to throw you under the bus for it.
 

Volourn

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"i would have banned Volourn years ago for not using the fucking quote feature."

I use the quote feature all the time. Unlike morons, I don't use the new shit. I use the old skool quote system that I learned in grade skool.
 

Grunker

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Totally hardcore. I'm convinced you're a troll now mr. V. DA having lots of stats compared to earlier games? You are a silly rabbit indeed.
 

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