Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Jedi Master Radek]

Tim got a new equipment, but he can't use it properly so video quality decreased

 

[Bad Sector]

"Player engagement" seems like a broader concept than "fun". You might keep playing a game because it's fun, but you can also keep playing for other, less wholesome reasons - FOMO, habit, social interaction, etc.

At least in his video he called that as "player addiction", not sure if that is a real term or something he came up with though.

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

No but color theory can explain why the color scheme was originally picked. However saying that color theory is the reason why so many movie posters have the same color scheme is like saying physics is the reason so many people die from gunshots.

 

[PapaPetro]

Tim got a new equipment, but he can't use it properly so video quality decreased

Looks like Tim discovered the concept of Overworld Maps in the late 70s.
For me it was from Nintendo games in the late 80s.

Who doesn't like variable granularity?
It makes small games/simulations feel HUGE.
Makes up for all the liminal distance between stuff.
(Since there's stuff to do inbetween stuff to do)

New Vid

 

[Infinitron]

Create new posts.

I talk about my thoughts on player level progression, including how experience points are earned, what is awarded to players when their levels advance, and how players spend those awards.

p.s. I think I fixed my camera settings right after I filmed this video. We will see tomorrow!

 

[Butter]

Talks about skills improving through use, but wants learning to come from failure rather than success. Grimoire actually features both, with your INT and WIS scores determining how much you learn from each outcome. The common criticism of this system is it can get grindy, and I don't think learning through failure changes anything about that.

 

[PapaPetro]

Create new posts

But think of the clutter!

 

[Wesp5]

I talk about my thoughts on player level progression, including how experience points are earned, what is awarded to players when their levels advance, and how players spend those awards.

In my opinion Bloodlines worked fine without any levels, the whole player-needs-to-see-progression-and-wants-to-level-up is very close to using rewards-to-keep-the-player-playing tricks...

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Tim pulling the old Troika T-shirt with the "funny smell" out of his garage and wearing it for one of his chats despite being 2 sizes too small was amusing, with the last few seconds of the video Tim being, like, "I gotta get out of this before I suffocate!" hah

 

[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.