Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Roguey]

Yeah, Tim saying you need levels is weird. Bloodlines worked fine without levels as did Deus Ex, Shadowrun, Age of Decadence, and Kingdom Come Deliverance. Just pay directly in things you can spend on the character screen or complete learn-by-doing/reading as KCD did.

Like Josh Sawyer, Tim has come to the conclusion that XP should come solely from quest completion and not through ways and means, xp junkies seething. Tim also admits that he was one of the ones pushing for quest xp-only in Pillars of Eternity and also wanted it in The Outer Worlds but apparently got voted down? Betrayed by Boyarsky.

Tim's learn-by-failure idea seems like it could be an annoying grind. "Want to put points in lockpick? Well first you have to find a chest you can't open and click on it a bunch of times to fill up the failure bar first."

I think points whether they're in perks or skills should be spendable at any point. I don't mind if you're in the middle of combat.

If Rusty were still here, he would be seething.

 

[Wesp5]

Isn't this how it already works in reality except for the rewards? Like in Bloodlines, only when you fail lockpicking or hacking you get told the difficulty level and then you spend the necessary XP to succeed on your next attempt ! A reward would be a little bit much for a probably very common way people that play...

 

[Roguey]

Isn't this how it already works in reality except for the rewards? Like in Bloodlines, only when you fail lockpicking or hacking you get told the difficulty level and then you spend the necessary XP to succeed on your next attempt ! A reward would be a little bit much for a probably very common way people that play...

Tim's a game designer who wants to make everyone happy, he sees how people complain about how they hate missing and failing skill checks and wonders "how can I make this fun"

 

[Shadenuat]

Tim also admits that he was one of the ones pushing for quest xp-only in Pillars of Eternity and also wanted it in The Outer Worlds but apparently got voted down? Betrayed by boyarski

While it may look reasonable on paper, it is kinda like communism of roleplaying. If you reward fighter for victory over powerful monster, or rogue for going through corridor full of traps, or ranger for taming dangerous beast, or wizard for learning spell from disenchanting big undead skeleton armor, you reward their play in character directly. If you just reward for objective, it's just a bland and arbitrary same "quest reward" which everyone in party gets.

 

[Shadenuat]

As an example color theory is a relatively (in the context of human history) modern concept that helps artists to understand better how humans perceive color combinations, but that doesn't mean no artists had some understanding of the ideas behind it, it only meant that each one had their own understanding - often out of intuitition and trial and error that everyone had to repeat or somehow find another to learn - and was harder for them to exchange that knowledge.

Isn't color theory the reason why so many movie posters have the same yellow blue color scheme?

Design was created to cheat time.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

If you reward fighter for victory over powerful monster, or rogue for going through corridor full of traps, or ranger for taming dangerous beast, or wizard for learning spell from disenchanting big undead skeleton armor, you reward their play in character directly.

Exploration rewards > Action rewards.
Deus Ex and Underrail Oddities are the future. You disagree? It's okay, one day you'll grow out of being wrong all the time.

 

[Bad Sector]

While i understand where Tim comes from, i like getting XP from killing stuff because it lets me make my characters more efficient at killing stuff.

After all i don't feel like killing an entire village is worth less than getting a cat down from a tree.

Perhaps this could be addressed by a variation on what Fallout did: during character creation you picked some major skills that got double points, but what if instead the 2-3 major skills you picked were those that gave you the "extra" XP? So, e.g. picking a fighter skill gets you XP from killing stuff but you won't get XP from dialogs unless you picked the "speechcraft" skill (or something like that). You'd still be able to increase non-major skills (as they might be useful in general - e.g. a fighter might still want to know how to cast a light healing spell even if they are not a mage or healer - note that i'm assuming class-less systems here) but the system would encourage specialization of making jacks-of-all-trades.

Which is also my main issue with the "XP for failure" Tim mentions: it feels to me that by getting XP by failing you'll make a jack-of-all-trades character since most likely you are going to fail at things your character lacks the skills for. This combined with the idea of using the XP whenever you want feels like it'll create a strong incentive for people to fail on X, gain some XP and then by X. With enough variation of skillchecks, there will be a lot of failures on different skill types and as such people "buying" (with XP) the skill they miss on the spot.

(btw i don't dislike the buy-skill-whenever-you-want idea, i just think it doesn't mesh well with the gain-xp-via-failure idea - at least unless your goal is to have jack-of-all-trades characters instead of encouraging specialization)

 

[ItsChon]

Underrail to this date has one of the best XP systems in a game, period. The Oddity system works so fucking well within the setting of the game, it's a testament to the masterpiece that is Underrail. I'm not sure how it could be adapted for other cRPGs, but I do think some sort of a hybrid system with XP awards coming from Quests and certain items found through exploration, along with small XP rewards from doing hyper specific tasks as mentioned above.

 

[Grauken]

Tim says he will never go back to randomized skill checks. Save scummers ruined it for everyone.

Since he also will never again work on a game big enough for most people to care it even outs

 

[Cyberarmy]

I'm not sure how it could be adapted for other cRPGs, but I do think some sort of a hybrid system with XP awards coming from Quests and certain items found through exploration, along with small XP rewards from doing hyper specific tasks as mentioned above.

Bloodlines kinda did it.

 

[ItsChon]

I'm not sure how it could be adapted for other cRPGs, but I do think some sort of a hybrid system with XP awards coming from Quests and certain items found through exploration, along with small XP rewards from doing hyper specific tasks as mentioned above.

Bloodlines kinda did it.

What did Bloodlines do?

 

[Cyberarmy]

I'm not sure how it could be adapted for other cRPGs, but I do think some sort of a hybrid system with XP awards coming from Quests and certain items found through exploration, along with small XP rewards from doing hyper specific tasks as mentioned above.

Bloodlines kinda did it.

What did Bloodlines do?

XP awards from quests and exploration, you can level up easly without killing anyone.

 

[PapaPetro]

I'm not sure how it could be adapted for other cRPGs, but I do think some sort of a hybrid system with XP awards coming from Quests and certain items found through exploration, along with small XP rewards from doing hyper specific tasks as mentioned above.

Bloodlines kinda did it.

What did Bloodlines do?

XP awards from quests and exploration, you can level up easly without killing anyone.

Someone made a breakdown of all the XP you can get in the game.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...g0VsJ0QijslgHNN8ldjDuuSzU/edit#gid=1804083098

Useful from a game design perspective because you can see how the design aim is based on the pacing of rewards.

Like I think I get how Tim thinks here; "How would I train an AI regression to get rewarded correctly from XP?".
So he applies what he learned from Project Management (Milestones) into the XP behavior distribution scheme (Behavior Conditioning of how the devs want you to react to their environment/stimuli).
It's not that much different than that infamous bonus sheet he made for Fallout/Interplay if you think about it

Also I wouldn't be surprised if Tim systematizes everything all the time;
like where you try describe everything in neat coherent/consistent tabletop mechanics in your head.
It's a fun metagame btw; good way to pass time.

 

[Roguey]

One of the issues of Bloodlines is that some quests try to bribe you into solving quests nonviolently by giving you more xp for doing so. People who engage with that lousy combat system get doubly punished (lousy gameplay and no extra reward for it).

Tim says he will never go back to randomized skill checks. Save scummers ruined it for everyone.

Since he also will never again work on a game big enough for most people to care it even outs

He may not be a full-timer anymore but he's working on The Outer Worlds 2 which will be a big game that Microsoft will market heavily, and a Mystery Game that will likely be something of interest.

 

[PapaPetro]

One of the issues of Bloodlines is that some quests try to bribe you into solving quests nonviolently by giving you more xp for doing so. People who engage with that lousy combat system get doubly punished (lousy gameplay and no extra reward for it).

Tim says he will never go back to randomized skill checks. Save scummers ruined it for everyone.

Since he also will never again work on a game big enough for most people to care it even outs

He may not be a full-timer anymore but he's working on The Outer Worlds 2 which will be a big game that Microsoft will market heavily, and a Mystery Game that will likely be something of interest.

I mean if you read between the lines, he's kinda fishing for a whale.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my thoughts on speedrunning in video games.

p.s. I think I found the right camera settings, especially for you "color seeing" people.

p.p.s. Once again, despite being almost 10 minutes long, this video has a pre-roll ad added by YouTube that I cannot remove.

 

[Nano]

Dammit Tim, take off the socks. His legs are sexy though.

 

[PapaPetro]

p.p.s. Once again, despite being almost 10 minutes long, this video has a pre-roll ad added by YouTube that I cannot remove.

I assume mobile.
You don't use Firefox + the Ublock Origin add on? That clears YT right up.
Also there's the Opera browser which blocks YT ads out the gate.

I talk about my thoughts on speedrunning in video games.

Mouse 1
Scientist 0

 

[Roguey]

If this is the camera "fixed" then it's just a total downgrade. Robert messed up.

They estimated 40-60 hours for Fallout 1, that's a big overestimate. 40 max if you're slow and doing everything https://howlongtobeat.com/game/3338

 

[Harthwain]

While it may look reasonable on paper, it is kinda like communism of roleplaying. If you reward fighter for victory over powerful monster, or rogue for going through corridor full of traps, or ranger for taming dangerous beast, or wizard for learning spell from disenchanting big undead skeleton armor, you reward their play in character directly. If you just reward for objective, it's just a bland and arbitrary same "quest reward" which everyone in party gets.

The main reason the classic RPGs give XP for monsters and traps is because you have to level up while fighting things inside a dungeon (or fight in general). This kind of design is less necessary if you have more activities than spelunking.

I like objective-based rewards, because they make you focus on an objective, not on a specific method you take to get there. This allows for more free-form approach. In general I think getting XP is subpar way of character progression and that it ought to be handled differently. Then you can focus on making your reward more material/substantial and perhaps even have a few choices of what your reward could be.

 

[Grauken]

While it may look reasonable on paper, it is kinda like communism of roleplaying. If you reward fighter for victory over powerful monster, or rogue for going through corridor full of traps, or ranger for taming dangerous beast, or wizard for learning spell from disenchanting big undead skeleton armor, you reward their play in character directly. If you just reward for objective, it's just a bland and arbitrary same "quest reward" which everyone in party gets.

The main reason the classic RPGs give XP for monsters and traps is because you have to level up while fighting things inside a dungeon (or fight in general). This kind of design is less necessary if you have more activities than spelunking.

I like objective-based rewards, because they make you focus on an objective, not on a specific method you take to get there. This allows for more free-form approach. In general I think getting XP is subpar way of character progression and that it ought to be handled differently. Then you can focus on making your reward more material/substantial and perhaps even have a few choices of what your reward could be.

Thankfully all attempts to replace combat XP haven't caught and most games go back to this approach eventually

 

[Harthwain]

Thankfully all attempts to replace combat XP haven't caught and most games go back to this approach eventually

The Elder Scrolls is massively popular and it handles experience differently.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Thankfully all attempts to replace combat XP haven't caught and most games go back to this approach eventually

The Elder Scrolls is massively popular and it handles experience differently.

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

 

[Harthwain]

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

It could be refined into something even better, that's true. Still, I like how organic it feels versus the traditional system, which is very artificial and encourages being a murderhobo, instead of bringing the player's focus to other things.

 

[Roguey]

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

I never felt the need to grind in any TES game though I did use to a mod for Oblivion to change how level scaling worked.