Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[0sacred]

I talk about things I did to improve morale on my teams.

Tim relied on bread and games to keep the peons happy, very Roman of him

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

More rage from the Morrowind crowd.

Tim believes that in action RPGs, skills should only affect things the player doesn't have direct control over. On the same page as Josh Sawyer.

That would perhaps be a valid and relevant point, if Morrowind were an action RPG, which it isn't.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the sheer amount of data in Arcanum. TLDW: it's a lot.

Here are the numbers I mentioned:

Art
846 Interface art
40 Unique NPC art
32 Monster art
73 Container art
32 Light shapes
88 Tile art
16 Roof art
43 Wall art
7 Wall proto
373 Portal art
1434 Scenery art
709 Item ground art
712 Item inventory art
415 Item paper doll art
339 Item schematic art
373 Facade art
78 Portraits
625 Item effects
9 Movies
56 End slides (each one with art and sound fx)
456 Eye candy art


Game Data
25 Story states
81 Maps
163 Quests
54 Blessings
52 Curses
76 Reputations
502 Spells
58 Level Schemes
56 Factions
36 Skills
123 Inventory Sources (e.g. rural general store)
69 Keys


Sounds
460 Critter sounds
29 Interface sounds
106 Item sounds
75 Melee sounds (e.g. punching)
842 Spell sounds
126 Misc sounds (e.g. chest opening)


Text
1152 Description strings
25 Combat text strings (e.g. poison level)
77 Backgrounds
408 Main menu text strings
330 In-Game Books
24 In-Game Notes
223 Newspaper Stories
34 Telegrams
35 Plaques
204 Quotes in the quote file

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about how Arcanum stored its game data files in big monolithic files...and why we did that.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

The vault tech experiments are the dumbest thing ever, and they keep making it worse with the expanded lore.

Vaults like the one with 1000 women and only one man?
Also the inverse, 1000 men and only one woman...

Ironically, the Vault with 999 men and 1 woman has a higher chance of success than the reverse vault, thanks to genetics.
You would think the reverse would be true, but it's not.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

That consumerism is predicated on the survival of civilization because that is your consumer base. Here, he is saying that not only did Vault-Tec not save enough people, but they knew they wouldn't, and they didn't even save the top one percent. I think the best you could frame it is that Vault-Tec never thought the bombs would drop, but I don't think that is a reasonable assumption to make.

None of it makes sense anymore, particularly when you factor in the layers of stuff they've been building on since they came up with the "Vaults as experiments" thing. They keep adding new layers on top of that and move further and further away from it making any sense, not only with reality but also the setting itself. If you know there's going to be a nuclear war, you're clearly going to want people as a contingency for what comes after. If the whole goal is to experiment on those people to see the effects of them being in a colony ship, you're going to want a large number of people who aren't being screwed with in order to deal with something like an invasion that might follow after the nuclear war.

They then came up with experiments which make no sense in the context of the space travel thing, like the 999 men and 1 woman vault, the gambling vault, the lottery murder vault, and so on. Even worse is that a lot of these vaults will lower the amount of people leaving the vaults at some point, which would end up screwing you should the Chinese have vaults that don't kill off people. You'd be hard pressed to get the government to go along with all this just because the only way to win a nuclear war is if there were a large population that survive it.

Another assumption you could make is that Vault-Tec didn't realize how bad a nuclear war would be, but that makes no sense considering they're a company that used to specialize in making things that could withstand the test of the time during and after a nuclear war. Meaning they'd have to have some of the best research on the effects of a nuclear war given the amount of nuclear weapons that existed at the time they were making vaults. The main two factions that would absolutely know would be the military and Vault-Tec, being a government contractor.

This is honestly something that a lot of the designers and writers of the TV show just don't seem to get. They just want to write wacky torture vaults because they're funny. They took the concept of vaults, which would be the mechanism for "winning" a nuclear war to mechanisms for losing the nuclear war in the most slapstick ways possible.

I think they really did not know where to go with Vault-Tec and them designing their Vaults as evil and reprehensible social experiments.
It doesn't make much sense.
Why would they experiment on the survivors who were supposed to recolonize the Earth after the A-bombs were dropped and the radiation was down to a more manageable level?
If anything, they should've taught them agricultural techniques, science, survival skills, how to develop a strong sense of solidarity with their fellow vault dwellers and help their community, things like that.

Tim Cain's concept of the Vaults as Social Experiments makes sense, it's the Bethesda take that is bungled as hell.

Tim Cain's original idea is that the US Government/Enclave believed they were the only ones who could survive Nuclear War. Everyone else was pretty much disposable.
The Enclave believed the solution was to leave Earth and find another new, liveable planet.
The Vaults were meant to be defacto Generation Ships, meant to make social experiments, which tested environments and situations that could happen in a real Generation Ship. Vaults are Generation Ships, the difference is that they never left Earth.
They also had the Control Vaults, which are, well, meant to be Control.

The original idea was:
1. Enclave ducks out, survives nuclear war
2. Vaults start their experiments
3. Enclave re-emerges, evaluates what happened with the Vaults, and using that data, leave Earth ready for anything which might happen with their generation ship.

However, the plan never borne fruit. The ship was never finished, was destroyed or is otherwise made inaccessible. Thus, we step to their backup plan, which is retaking the Continental United States.

The Fallout show's conception of the Vault Experiments is also weird as hell but for other reasons. Bethesda vaults are pretty much torture/death vaults, while the show's vaults seem to be more like a bunch of rich people throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
That said, a big question mark of the show is that we have no idea what is the relationship between Vault-Tec and The Enclave now. In the OG games, they are thick and thin.
In the show, we don't know how close the Enclave and Vault-Tec's agendas are.

 

[NecroLord]

Please don't talk about the abysmal Fallout show here...
We are trying to keep it classy, remember?

 

[NecroLord]

Does Larian even survive 00s RPG wasteland if they weren't leeching off Belgian government subsidies?

An interesting and crucial point: the Belgian government is ultimately responsible for the creation of Baldur's Gate 3.

A war crime...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The original idea was:
1. Enclave ducks out, survives nuclear war
2. Vaults start their experiments
3. Enclave re-emerges, evaluates what happened with the Vaults, and using that data, leave Earth ready for anything which might happen with their generation ship.

However, the plan never borne fruit. The ship was never finished, was destroyed or is otherwise made inaccessible. Thus, we step to their backup plan, which is retaking the Continental United States.

This is why it's a dumb idea. It's the Underpants Gnome profit chart, only the ???? is build a ship that's never been built before after a nuclear war. Which is dumb. You're basically screwing up at least half of your survival pool hedged on the bet that you can accomplish something that's never been accomplished in the history of the planet. If you lose that bet, you lose everything.

The Fallout show's conception of the Vault Experiments is also weird as hell but for other reasons. Bethesda vaults are pretty much torture/death vaults, while the show's vaults seem to be more like a bunch of rich people throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

They're even worse than that. They're TWISTED and WACKY. They have absolutely no goal present despite claiming the original goal of a generation ship. And this doesn't even start with Bethesda. The OG Fallout Bible started it. Bethesda is just really good at taking a shit idea and shit examples of an idea and making them so much shittier. In fact, it's nearly impossible to run across a control vault in anything following Fallout 2.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_known_Vaults?

They just can't help themselves.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about two recent mementos I have gotten...well, three if you count chocolate.

 

[Max Damage]

More rage from the Morrowind crowd.

Tim believes that in action RPGs, skills should only affect things the player doesn't have direct control over. On the same page as Josh Sawyer.

Mount & Blade already solved that, it felt natural speeding up attack speed as your weapon skill improves, and in Deus Ex your accuracy adjusts faster the more skilled JC is with a weapon.

 

[Roguey]

Mount & Blade already solved that, it felt natural speeding up attack speed as your weapon skill improves, and in Deus Ex your accuracy adjusts faster the more skilled JC is with a weapon.

Hardly anyone likes Deus Ex's skill system when it comes to guns. They got rid of it in Invisible War and HR/MD also used a better system.

 

[Max Damage]

Popularity isn't necessarily measure of quality, and the accuracy augments in HR is basically same thing but dumbed down to 2 points to become master of all instead of specializing in anything.

 

[Butter]

Mount & Blade already solved that, it felt natural speeding up attack speed as your weapon skill improves, and in Deus Ex your accuracy adjusts faster the more skilled JC is with a weapon.

Hardly anyone likes Deus Ex's skill system when it comes to guns. They got rid of it in Invisible War and HR/MD also used a better system.

The systems in HR/MD are universally worse than what the original game used.

 

[Roguey]

Popularity isn't necessarily measure of quality, and the accuracy augments in HR is basically same thing but dumbed down to 2 points to become master of all instead of specializing in anything.

Games ultimately have to make money.

Maybe some garage dev can make a game with the crappy "wait for accuracy" system that a handful of people will like.

 

[Butter]

New DX was so successful they got their trilogy shitcanned. Too bad. A lot of people really liked the knife using ammo system.

 

[Max Damage]

Popularity isn't necessarily measure of quality, and the accuracy augments in HR is basically same thing but dumbed down to 2 points to become master of all instead of specializing in anything.

Games ultimately have to make money.

Maybe some garage dev can make a game with the crappy "wait for accuracy" system that a handful of people will like.

Good thing all of those games made enough money to warrant a franchise then, still no argument on why "wait for accuracy" is bad in stealth focused methodical games either.

 

[rojay]

Ironically, the Vault with 999 men and 1 woman has a higher chance of success than the reverse vault, thanks to genetics.
You would think the reverse would be true, but it's not.

Which one would you rather live in?

 

[Roguey]

New DX was so successful they got their trilogy shitcanned. Too bad. A lot of people really liked the knife using ammo system.

Human Revolution was successful. Mankind Divided underperformed for a variety of factors, none having to do with the gameplay itself, which was quite good and an improvement over its predecessor.

Good thing all of those games made enough money to warrant a franchise then, still no argument on why "wait for accuracy" is bad in stealth focused methodical games either.

Based on the "it's not fun" feedback, there's universal consensus among professional game designers that it's bad, which is why no one's used it since the 00s. Alpha Protocol was the last solely because a Sega producer forced Obsidian to use it under protest.

 

[Bulo]

Here's an argument: "Wait for accuracy" is gay, thus only a fag would enjoy it

 

[flyingjohn]

Hardly anyone likes Deus Ex's skill system when it comes to guns

Hardy anybody liked dungeons in dungeon crawlers( nobody "liked" traps and getting lost) , combat in crpg's( nobody "liked" trash mobs and slow battles) or puzzles in adventure games( nobody "liked" pixel hunting or moon logic). People refuse to admit that those "tedious" elements made the games unique and challenging.

They got rid of it in Invisible War

They got rid of the entire skill system not just guns. So were hacking and lockpicking giant issues in Deus ex as well? According to Harvey, yeah. So his opinion is wrong as the game critical and financial result showed.

HR/MD also used a better system

You mean the two aug skill that boost accuracy? Exactly like the original, minus being more gradient and practically being useless because most weapons don't need em? And it wasn't just accuracy, the skill being tied to specific weapon types gave you builds.

Human Revolution was successful.

Not according to this:

Games ultimately have to make money.

HR took 5+years of development and barely delivered the cost back. MD was the same. Eidos takes way too much time to make stuff while being costly and maybe deliver 15-20 percent back. That is not financially successful no matter what.

 

[Wesp5]

Mankind Divided underperformed for a variety of factors, none having to do with the gameplay itself, which was quite good and an improvement over its predecessor.

So what were these factors then?

 

[Roguey]

Hardly anyone likes Deus Ex's skill system when it comes to guns

Hardy anybody liked dungeons in dungeon crawlers( nobody "liked" traps and getting lost) , combat in crpg's( nobody "liked" trash mobs and slow battles) or puzzles in adventure games( nobody "liked" pixel hunting or moon logic). People refuse to admit that those "tedious" elements made the games unique and challenging.

When people praise Deus Ex, it's the breadth of options and the level design that's praised. Everyone agrees the combat is lousy, the gun skills are a big contributor to that.

They got rid of it in Invisible War

They got rid of the entire skill system not just guns. So were hacking and lockpicking giant issues in Deus ex as well? According to Harvey, yeah. So his opinion is wrong as the game critical and financial result showed.

Harvey did a talk on everything that went wrong in Invisible War and "we made it play more like a real shooter" wasn't one of them.

HR/MD also used a better system

You mean the two aug skill that boost accuracy? Exactly like the original, minus being more gradient and practically being useless because most weapons don't need em? And it wasn't just accuracy, the skill being tied to specific weapon types gave you builds.

No, it wasn't exactly like the original. There's no shrinking reticule. When you aim down the sights, you hit where you're aiming. Like I said, better.

Human Revolution was successful.

Not according to this:

Games ultimately have to make money.

HR took 5+years of development and barely delivered the cost back. MD was the same. Eidos takes way too much time to make stuff while being costly and maybe deliver 15-20 percent back. That is not financially successful no matter what.

HR was successful enough for a director's cut re-release and a sequel, thus it was successful.

Meanwhile, from Deus Ex to Daggerfall/Morrowind to Bloodlines to Mass Effect to Alpha Protocol - all the developers of these games have abandoned their particular way of handling accuracy and have outright spoken out against them. Indie games in development that are trying to replicate them - Core Decay, Wayward Realms - are not taking their approach to weapon accuracy.

So what were these factors then?

I wouldn't know for certain, but 2016-17 was a AAA imsim apocalypse where MD, Dishonored 2, and Prey all underperformed despite not being terrible.

 

[flyingjohn]

it's the breadth of options

Combat is one of those options. Ironically, the other major gameplay option, stealth, is just not really good and doesn't even interact with the skill system.At least weapons have skills tied to them.

the gun skills are a big contributor to that.

No. This myth has to die already:
-Pistols start at trained and are the only solo weapon type that is affected by the shirking reticule. You can make a case for this mattering for the first level but past that you either get new weapons or upgrade pistols to master.
-Shotguns, and rifles are not affected by this in any meaningful way since their range will require you to be closer to the enemies.
-Snipers are bugged and thus you can easily headshot without any accuracy
-Gep doesn't need accuracy

Harvey did a talk on everything that went wrong in Invisible War and "we made it play more like a real shooter" wasn't one of them.

Exactly the point, he has no idea why it failed and blames consoles and removing "fantasy" options. He has never made the connection why fusing skills and augs while removing weapon skills made the game worse.Protip, it is about player choice to mix match options and not just use what the devs force you to. Ironically, the opposite case with IW weapons, which give you no reason to specialize and thus everything can be used the same, compared to the original where you had builds.

There's no shrinking reticule. When you aim down the sights, you hit where you're aiming. Like I said, better.

Where is the rpg side to that? If you are making a rpg/fps and the fps part is player driven, then you just have a fps.

HR was successful enough for a director's cut re-release

Outsourced and needed Nintendo money to even materialize. More like square trying to wring money from a dissapointment. Same as the mobile game.

and a sequel

Square giving them one more shot to see if they can actually give back the investment, they couldn't. Same as tomb raider, financially disappointing compared to their budgets while getting multiple games funded.Also, square sold them and then embracer cut them off for a reason.It is not a coincidence anymore.

ll the developers of these games have abandoned their particular way of handling accuracy and have outright spoken out against them

I wonder if there is a pattern here:
-Deus ex -IW. Dumbed down game, skills removed.
-Morrowind to Oblivion. Dumbed down game and some skills removed.
-Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2/3. Removal of almost any real rpg elements.
-Bloodlines to outer worlds. From broken to bland.
-Alpha Protocol. Didn't know Obsidian made anymore tps games.

Maybe removal of "tedious" elements leads to bigger problems.

all the developers of these games have abandoned their particular way of handling accuracy and have outright spoken out against them

The same devs also seem to have abandoned good design choices so their opinions are meaningless.

Indie games in development that are trying to replicate them - Core Decay, Wayward Realms - are not taking their approach to weapon accuracy.

Indie games having no idea what made the originals work, news at 11.

TLDR: FPS/RPG combo games need character skills for major stuff or there is no point to the rpg stuff.

 

[Roguey]

-Shotguns, and rifles are not affected by this in any meaningful way since their range will require you to be closer to the enemies.

Assault rifles are not a weapon that requires being close.

Snipers are bugged and thus you can easily headshot without any accuracy

This is not my experience.

Additionally, it doesn't matter if you even cheat all your weapon stats to max at the beginning because the game was tuned for shrinking reticule-gameplay.

Exactly the point, he has no idea why it failed and blames consoles and removing "fantasy" options. He has never made the connection why fusing skills and augs while removing weapon skills made the game worse.Protip, it is about player choice to mix match options and not just use what the devs force you to. Ironically, the opposite case with IW weapons, which give you no reason to specialize and thus everything can be used the same, compared to the original where you had builds.

You've given me no reason to believe you're more of an authority on why Invisible War failed.

Where is the rpg side to that? If you are making a rpg/fps and the fps part is player driven, then you just have a fps.

The role playing is in making in-game decisions the game reacts to in addition to the ways in which you can customize your character. Role-playing game doesn't mean "tabletop role-playing game simulator" and hasn't for decades now.

Maybe removal of "tedious" elements leads to bigger problems.

Leads to bigger success as far as Bethesda, Bioware, and Obsidian are concerned. Oh and CD Projekt too with their Cyberpunk thing.