Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[deuxhero]

The only good weapon durability systems are ones where it is completely unrelated to money sink. Stuff like Swordcraft Story trilogy, where it's a second HP bar that's either automatic or trivial to refill between battles, and Way of the Samurai 1-3, where it's a stress gauge that goes down automatically when not attacking/blocking and bad things only happen when it's full.

It's even worse with guns. The only parts that fail with use on any decently made firearm are barrel (where only the rifling fails), bolt and springs. Due to the design nature and materials, there's no fixing these parts as a practical mater and they just need a replacement. Even then, unless the player is dumpping mags in full auto for the sake of it, the lifespan will far exceed the number of rounds the player will actually fire in an entire campaign.

edit: I can't even think of a single game where repairs are money sinks except those where "repair" is actually restoring charges to a magic item. Maybe New Vegas with ultra high end stuff you find damaged early (which is pretty much the stuff off the dead Brotherhood of Steel scouts), but even that is entirely avoidable. Even games with repair I can think of having far better non-repair money sinks, like Morrowind's training and enchanting (MW's many economy issues not withstanding).

edit: Fire Emblem's implementation is kinda a cash sink, but it's more of resources being finite. You always know exactly how many uses you have left, and in most cases repairing items is an artifact level effect that happens 3 or less times per playthrough and is only used to renew the most important ones, rather than a chore of constantly rushing back to repair shit.

 

[NwNgger]

If a good number of people say the UI sucks, then it sucks.

No..? A good number of simpeltons had a flawed opinion. You're just searching for confirmation bias. And besides that, none of us would be here if we cared about the mass audience opinion on RPGs. I'm sorry but if you can't figure out Arcanums UI then maybe you really do belong in the special camp.

I think with something like a UI, you have to go with public opinion, because usability by the end-user is what a UI is supposed to be all about. It's not a matter of taste like some other aspects of the game might be.

While I get where you're coming from, I have to disagree. The general public opinion might be that it is obtuse, but to me it would seem to be that it's people not familiar with RPGs who are complaining about it (in which case just about any "real" RPG will be a challenge for them UI wise). It is understandable that it'd be difficult for them, it makes sense, but they aren't the target audience. Bit of a hyperbolic statement but do airplane cockpits have shit UIs because the general public can't use them, or is it functional for those who it is intended for? Of course airplanes aren't necessarily commercial products but again commercial products are also allowed to be targeted toward specific audiences and don't have to try and have mass appeal. I mean that much should be obvious to Codexers at least.

I agree with what you're saying. Bare in mind the publications that said Arcanum's UI is clunky are the same publications that are racing to praise the Western Erotic Game known as Baldur's Gate 3.

Their opinions are not derived from any kind of critical thinking. They reviewed Arcanum badly because they didn't care to read the manual or engage with the game in any meaningful way. Whereas Baldur's Gate 3 was very popular with their disgusting kind so they praised it whilst still not engaging critically to find the flaws.

 

[Daedalos]

So what are the chances that Outer Worlds 2 actually turns out great this time around? Have they listening to feedback and criticism on the first game? And they have a much bigger budget now im assuming into the AAA territory.
Supposedly, he is still very much shadow game director and Leonard Boyarsky is the main game director.

I remember being quite disappointed with outer worlds giving the fact that two of the most well-renowned people were spear-heading it, perhaps it was scope, design or budget-retraints, who knows. Have Tim or Leonard ever commented on the criticism anywhere?

I REALLY want outer worlds 2 to be the REAL fallout + firefly or fallout in space game that they couldnt seemingly make with the first game for various reasons.

We all want the REAL New Vegas in space game.

PLEASE TIM, make it good.

 

[Roguey]

Supposedly, he is still very much shadow game director and Leonard Boyarsky is the main game director.

Boyarsky is the creative lead, but Brandon Adler is the director. I do not believe Cain is telling him what to do.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So what are the chances that Outer Worlds 2 actually turns out great this time around?

Zero.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my ideas to translate the book Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny into a computer role playing game.

 

[0sacred]

is science fantasy a terrible genre or is Lord of Light especially silly?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Durability and other attrition features are pointless busywork unless if gameplay is purposefully built around it, survival genre style.

 

[BlackheartXIII]

 

[Alienman]

Check your bigotry more like.

 

[Roguey]

Public apologies after a private one are submissive behavior and Tim is a natural sub.

 

[0sacred]

so deadnaming is when you bring up someone's professional past who used to be relevant

 

[Egosphere]

is science fantasy a terrible genre or is Lord of Light especially silly?

Think something like 2nd Apocalypse would work well in video game format

 

[Egosphere]

Durability and other attrition features are pointless busywork unless if gameplay is purposefully built around it, survival genre style.

Hate durability. However, I think a damage bonus added to a weapon in pristine condition which degrades to some baseline over continued usage until you 'repair' it would work quite well.

 

[Egosphere]

So what are the chances that Outer Worlds 2 actually turns out great this time around? Have they listening to feedback and criticism on the first game? And they have a much bigger budget now im assuming into the AAA territory.
Supposedly, he is still very much shadow game director and Leonard Boyarsky is the main game director.

I remember being quite disappointed with outer worlds giving the fact that two of the most well-renowned people were spear-heading it, perhaps it was scope, design or budget-retraints, who knows. Have Tim or Leonard ever commented on the criticism anywhere?

I REALLY want outer worlds 2 to be the REAL fallout + firefly or fallout in space game that they couldnt seemingly make with the first game for various reasons.

We all want the REAL New Vegas in space game.

PLEASE TIM, make it good.

I'd say 10%. 90% that it's simply bland, uninspired, and forgettable.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I talk about my ideas to translate the book Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny into a computer role playing game.

Hadn't realized that Tim Cain was prestigious enough to be a fan of Roger Zelazny. Second look at geometric shapes?

 

[Sukhāvatī]

is science fantasy a terrible genre or is Lord of Light especially silly?

Vance's Planet of Adventure series was my fave of the genre.

Edit - Cool, never knew about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Planet_of_Adventure#Fictional_Settings_2

 

[Zeriel]

I went back and forth on it for a while of, maybe he's just being polite and he isn't really as stupid as he presents himself in interviews and talks nowadays, but after this nonsense I think it's fair to say of Tim: "What a fucking retard."

At least he had a productive youth.

 

[Zeriel]

so deadnaming is when you bring up someone's professional past who used to be relevant

Yeah I actually had this experience when people were talking about the actress who transitioned using her new name and I had no fucking clue who they were talking about for a while. You can't refer to public figures who are famous as their old name as the new name, especially when their popularity nosedives off a cliff after transitioning and they do no new work. You might as well refer to Jesus Christ as Flozzlegurp the Majestic and then be offended when people have no idea who you are talking about. Like most left-wing activism, it's societal and linguistic sabotage, bombing away cognitive clarity and leaving nothing but confusion and ruin in its wake.

 

[Bohrain]

I like having some form of weapon durability. It's a way to incentivize wider equipment use throughout the game if done right. You keep iron/steel weapons around for a long while in most Fire Emblems and Daggerfall because constantly using the more expensive ones bankrupts you. Fallout 3/NV repair system gives an incentive to pick up lower tier weapons for both repair and loot when they are abundant, since a fully repaired shittier weapon is usually worth more per inventory weight than a sole barely intact higher tier weapon. And then there's the limited uses vs strength aspect that Souls games used for bleed weapons and such.
But I do not see much benefit in armor durability mechanics. Weapon wearing down screws your damage output, but picking up a shittier spare vs backing out completely is something I consider instead of just hitting quickload. Weapon durability also tends to always happen purely from player input. But armor or shield breaking down has never not been frustrating to me in games. It tends to happen from enemy input, emergency replacement gear tends to be too heavy to be kept around and chest pieces in particular tend to be the single most expensive piece of equipment so it's expensive. It's simply something you wish never happens as opposed to something you want to strategize around for. And god forbid if an environmental hazard requires armor with particular resistance, which then breaks down. If armor durability is there just as a money sink, then invent better ones, because this one absolutely sucks.
In general, I think durability is a good mechanic particularly in games where you control a single character and player input has more impact than dice rolls. For example I don't see much point in regular arrows/bolts being finite in IE games, where you can't manually aim individual shots.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about how I would remake Fallout today...including defining what I mean by "remake".

 

[Roguey]

He'd add procedural generation for the overworld map like Arcanum.

He'd improve UI and AI.

Redo the art in higher detail.

Add creature respawning to the world in all the locations.

Increase the level cap....? But in a normal game of Fallout you would have to relentlessly grind to even hit it. Sniper is a level 18 perk but in my playthrough when I went around killing every enemy, I only just barely made it to level 15 before reaching the Master. Although I guess this is what that creature respawning is for (later in the video he confirms this).

More reactivity, including changes to maps during play.

Fixing the end slides and adding more.

Massive mechanics pass. For attributes, charisma should do more, and intelligence wouldn't affect the number of skill points. Skill pass: combining doctor and first aid (Sawyer beaming), gambling either made more useful or rolled into something else. Doing what Fallout 2 did and make the Friendly Foe perk an inherent part of the interface. Traits pass: Nerf Gifted (pick two or three attributes to raise up instead of +1 to all seven).

Fixing the bugs of course.

As flawed as Fallout is, I'm glad he'll likely never be able to do this.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Add creature respawning to the world in all the locations.

You didn't understand him. Those respawns are not part of some grinding gameplay loop. They are meant to convey changes to locations based on player actions, like having radscorpions spawn in the city after the player killed everyone.

He also mentioned fixing unfinished quests.

 

[Roguey]

Add creature respawning to the world in all the locations.

You didn't understand him. Those respawns are not part of some grinding gameplay loop. They are meant to convey changes to locations based on player actions, like having radscorpions spawn in the city after the player killed everyone.

He also mentioned fixing unfinished quests.

It's that and grinding given what he said later about how you'd reach the new level cap.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The creature respawn sounded like a really good idea. You wipe out a village and maybe something like raiders have taken over the town later. You kill all the raiders and the wilderness takes the town back and it’s full of Radscorpions or something. Sounds good. Also, as noted by him in the video, this is already in the game in some places; he just wants it to be a universal thing throughout the game.

Nothing he bring up that he’s change is bad. And in fact, he’s playing it pretty save with what he brings up. Basically the video is him saying: I want to fix the problems Fallout had, I want to implement things we could only do selectively more universally, and I want to push the reactive of the world beyond what we did in Arcanum.

He doesn’t even get into things that could be seen a contentious. Like if he’d keep combat as is, or if he’d make it more like Tactics, or if he’d do it more in the mold of something like the new XCOM games, or if he’d implement a combat system more along the lines of what they created for Temple of Element Evil and just do away with the grid system.

It is interesting that he brings up wanting to do a better version of the procedural generated overworld map like Arcanum only because he does have a video from not too long ago (can’t be too long ago, the channel is still pretty new) where he talks about that fully open world not really being something they need. I think he said he may have even cut it today...I can’t really remember. I don’t even know how this can be marked as decline. This aspect of Arcanum is completely avoidable if you don’t want to engage with it, and it’d likely work the same way if he was doing a Fallout remake. The more interesting part of this I think is the talk of more random encounters by way of ruins (and caves) you can come across in the wasteland that act as dungeons.