Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Old Hans]

I never laughed so hard during a game than when I tried to drag the hanging corpse to the refrigerator during my disco playthrough or failing to steal the raincoat from the convenance store. that game was hilarious

 

[NecroLord]

Quest-critical NPCs have a far better solution than either invulnerability or Tim's cop out of preventing direct access to them (which you can't use all the time without it feeling artificial):

Player agency doesn't mean that your choices can't result in a game over. Of course ideally the game adapts and still lets you go forward if at all possible.

Fallout and Arcanum.
You can kill Main Quest critical NPCs and still progress through the game, though Fallout 2 springs to mind in that you can't kill your fellow tribe members. But why would you do that in the first place? It's monstrous!
Morrowind has the issue of not allowing different quest progression if you do indeed kill quest critical NPCs. Instead, you are hit with the "With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed" message, which has been rightfully turned into a rather hilarious meme.

 

[__scribbles__]

Morrowind has the issue of not allowing different quest progression if you do indeed kill quest critical NPCs. Instead, you are hit with the "With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed" message, which has been rightfully turned into a rather hilarious meme.

What Morrowind did right is that you can actually finish the game in spite of getting the message.

 

[NecroLord]

Morrowind is awesome.

 

[Roguey]

You can kill Main Quest critical NPCs and still progress through the game, though Fallout 2 springs to mind in that you can't kill your fellow tribe members. But why would you do that in the first place? It's monstrous!

The Overseer is immortal because he has to be there for the ending where you do kill him if you have negative karma or bloody mess.

 

[Diggfinger]

I talk about the balance between story and game design...and what that even means.

The Ultimate Non-Question has hereby been asked!
We are back to Year Zero

Tim goes into Buddism and says;
'You un-asked the question'

 

[Infinitron]

You can kill Main Quest critical NPCs and still progress through the game, though Fallout 2 springs to mind in that you can't kill your fellow tribe members. But why would you do that in the first place? It's monstrous!

The Overseer is immortal because he has to be there for the ending where you do kill him if you have negative karma or bloody mess.

Did they ever create death animations for him at that stage?

 

[Roguey]

Tim sounds like he has the 'vid, hope it doesn't get worse.

 

[NecroLord]

Tim sounds like he has the 'vid, hope it doesn't get worse.

He'll survive.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Lot of people try to get in the industry through friends or family, or get help for their children through friends and family. A woman Cain went to high school 30 years ago tried to get him to help. At the end of it all, it's not personal, it's just business.
Worked somewhere that really needed a type of specialist, had a friend who was that specialist, recommended him, it did not work out for either side, Cain's friend did not handle the situation well, the company did not handle him well, he quit, and Cain's boss there told him it would be a while before he ever trusted another recommendation from him.
The second story is someone he worked with at another company as a programmer had some arrangement with the company that no one could look at his code. Code would arrive to Cain's team pre compiled. Ten years later, Cain is at another company and the person asks him to have lunch; He's applying for a job at that company and is hoping Cain could put in a good word. They wanted him to take a programmer test, he wanted to skip that by having Cain vouch for him. Cain recalled two instances at the previous company where he had issues with his code and told him he would have to take the test. The other guy insisted on Cain vouching for him and got mad and left when he won't.
Third story, someone wanted to join a team he was on as a designer. Cain had worked with him before very distantly. Cain said tentatively yes, but there is a design test and you have to get the lead designer's approval. He took the test, the lead knew he and Cain were friends. The Lead looked at it, went to Cain and told him it was not very good, Cain looked at it and agreed it was not very good. Unfinished answers, rambling answers, some design answers showed instant flaws. Lead Designer was glad Cain agreed because he was not going to extend an offer. Sometime later the guy called Cain asking why he wasn't getting an offer, and when told the lead designer wouldn't go for it, asked Cain if he could override him. He left angry when Cain told him how bad that would look.
If you have a game development job, people will ask you to help them get a job, and they will not be willing to put any effort into it, no classes, no demos.
'It's not personal, it's business' is a common phrase people associate with a business about to do something very shady, but Cain understands separating the two. There are friends in the industry he would not want to work with because of their different philosophies.
Some people will take it personal when you tell them it just doesn't make sense for you to work for them, your skillset or your work practices aren't a match, they will say you should find an accommodation for them, and Cain can accept that but only to a point. If you go to a RPG studio, all of your resume is action games, and you response to their design test is what you would see in action games, you probably aren't a fit.
Businesses do nasty things, but some decisions are just practical, and if you bring friendship into it, you're going to cause problems.
Cain had very highly placed friends at a company he flubbed the test for, but he moved on instead of trying to get them to pull strings.
Sometimes Cain regrets failing interviews, but other times something bad happens at a company he didn't join later on and he wonders if he dodged a bullet.
Interview questions can work both ways and give you an indication if the company is not a good fit for you.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Feargus' 3-year old toddler cashing in his Obsidian paycheck: "right on, dude!"

 

[StrongBelwas]

VATS isn't what they called it, but it's what everyone calls it now.
GURPS had a feature called Called Shots at the risk of a penalty to hit at potential advantage of doing more damage or inflicting status effects.
Fallout's GURP combat code was pretty modular, written by Cain himself.
Cain had made a GURPS character creation that had a lot of modules that were external text files you could read in. Wrote the combat code the same way. Game kept separate from game mechanics, mechanics were GURPS. Combat was turn based engine that called information from the modules supporting the mechanics.
After the switch to SPECIAL, Cain just extracted the modules and put them somewhere else. Now they had to make their own system. Cain wanted to keep the called shots mechanic as the sprites were 3d models extracted into sprites, and the called shot system had the wireframe models, which were cool and Cain wanted to keep.
Wanted to keep called shots because it made combat more tactical, and differentiated weapons and armor from each other. Wanted to leave option the possibility of perks altering Called Shots. Called Shots gave Monsters/Weapons/Armor/Perks/Skills/Traits have more differentiation.
It benefited players by allowing clever players to take advantage of all of those differences. If you wanted to ignore it and just brute force it, it was possible.
Whole point of BB Gun was shooting people in the eye, but one of the producers realized you could punch people in the head and consistently knock people out with your Unarmed high enough. Could even do this to robots, which Cain found amusing enough he decided to keep it in.

 

[Quillon]

I talk about the continuum of player agency in games, including what I like to include in my own.

lmao @10:50

There’s another interesting wrinkle to the conversation with Parvati, when she opens up. In most RPGs like The Outer Worlds, players are granted a wide range of responses to every situation. You can be nice, you can be an asshole, you can be indifferent. In this moment, when Parvati chooses to be vulnerable, the game explicitly limits your range of responses.

Apparently this^ is what Tim hates the most.

 

[gurugeorge]

I sometimes enjoy his videos, he's obviously smart and has a lot of experience. But it's sometimes difficult to take him seriously given how fucking crap TOW is.

 

[NecroLord]

I sometimes enjoy his videos, he's obviously smart and has a lot of experience. But it's sometimes difficult to take him seriously given how fucking crap TOW is.

He is definitely running out of subjects to talk about, I think.
He is a treasure trove of information about the gaming industry pre 90s and over. Was such an inventive man with great ideas, now merely a husk...
The Fallout and Troika glory days are gone, replaced with TOW...

 

[Roguey]

Apparently this^ is what Tim hates the most.

Ol' Tim will carve out exceptions when it suits him. People typically aren't 100% consistent in their beliefs or stated preferences.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about the differences between games made by committee and games made by collaboration.

 

[Roguey]

Tim says videos about coding are both the most requested and least watched of his videos (unsurprising)

You may end up with you know the person who made crafting loved crafting so much that all the best items come from
crafting and so now there's really no reason to ever use a dropped weapon or a quest reward weapon because the best weapons all are made with crafting.

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

I'm also somewhat confident that in Arcanum the best tech weapons were things you had to craft yourself, which made sense.

I've seen someone suggest a feature that was bad and when it got shot down he said "You guys never let me put in any of my ideas, I haven't had an idea put in this game for months," and then out of this misguided sense of fairness this bad feature is put in because you feel bad for the person and you want to be fair. I've done this, I've actually let features go into my games that I didn't really like but I realized that the person who was suggesting it hadn't had an idea going in the game at all.

Sounds very Arcanum. "You have your qualities, but providing ideas for this particular game isn't one of them" seems the thing to say.

In committee-made games I often see the vision as this generic "well it's kind of a fantasy game and we go around and do
fantasy quests and get money and treasure and we go up and we get new abilities and then we beat up more fantasy monsters." Okay, I've seen those games in development. Yikes. There's really just no strong vision there because it's being made by a whole bunch of people.

Cain throwing some subtle shade at Pillars of Eternity which was absolutely designed by committee (even stapling three different pitches together for its story).

 

[Viata]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

Just make the reward either be a weapon or some item for the crafting of a superior weapon. So either the player already get something to use or a part of something that he will build later on. There is no "farming for that part" as you can only get it from that quest and after you made your choice, that is it.

 

[NecroLord]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

Why, yes, I enjoy crafting and using the Pyrotechnic Axe in Arcanum, how can you tell?

 

[scytheavatar]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

 

[ds]

Crafting can somewhat work for consumables. For equipment it should either be restricted to early-game low tech items (to fill in until you find a real weapon of the type you want) or to a low number of very powerful items with dedicated quests to make them. Having crafting compete with loot throughout the game is extremely shit.

 

[Roguey]

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

As Viata noted, one solution is to put the ultimate weapons in the game itself, but you can improve them even further (but not by too much, no turbo plasma rifle) with crafting.

 

[Daedalos]

Tim says videos about coding are both the most requested and least watched of his videos (unsurprising)

You may end up with you know the person who made crafting loved crafting so much that all the best items come from
crafting and so now there's really no reason to ever use a dropped weapon or a quest reward weapon because the best weapons all are made with crafting.

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

I'm also somewhat confident that in Arcanum the best tech weapons were things you had to craft yourself, which made sense.

I've seen someone suggest a feature that was bad and when it got shot down he said "You guys never let me put in any of my ideas, I haven't had an idea put in this game for months," and then out of this misguided sense of fairness this bad feature is put in because you feel bad for the person and you want to be fair. I've done this, I've actually let features go into my games that I didn't really like but I realized that the person who was suggesting it hadn't had an idea going in the game at all.

Sounds very Arcanum. "You have your qualities, but providing ideas for this particular game isn't one of them" seems the thing to say.

In committee-made games I often see the vision as this generic "well it's kind of a fantasy game and we go around and do
fantasy quests and get money and treasure and we go up and we get new abilities and then we beat up more fantasy monsters." Okay, I've seen those games in development. Yikes. There's really just no strong vision there because it's being made by a whole bunch of people.

Cain throwing some subtle shade at Pillars of Eternity which was absolutely designed by committee (even stapling three different pitches together for its story).

Depends on how you define "best"... crafting could introduce not maybe BETTER but alternative cool ways a weapon handles or alternative fires and shit. People not wanting to invest skillpoints into crafting will want some cool good gear anyway, so how do you satisfy both parties? Theres several ways to do that
People will always minmax and meta-game shit.
So having multiple "best" ways to get stuff, is desireable, because it opens up design space and playthroughs. Like I said, being a talker allows you to experience the game 1 way, being a crafter allows you to experience combat and weapons another specific but not always better way of killing shit than normal.

Kind of like traits and disadvantages I guess... go down this path fully? okay, u get some special stuff unlocked which is cool, but all ohter paths are blocked for you for another playthrough with another skillbuild. allows for alot of replayability and C&C

I absolutely would hate being shoehorned into skilling into "crafting" just because I need the best weapons in order to murderhobo in combat, that seems like restrictive and shit design
Tim talked about it alot before.
Maybe crafting doesnt MAKE the best weapons for you, but maybe makes the ammo, that is very rare, for the best gun / coolest gun in the game? shit like that is interesting

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't get it. If your crafting system allows you to make weapons, shouldn't it result in being able to make the best weapons? Otherwise, what's the point in being allowed to make weapons with that skill?

That is why crafting is a mistake and should not exist in CRPGs. The fundamental problem is that there are people who love the idea that all their best equipment are stuff they craft themselves, then there are those who hate the idea that the sword they get for killing a dragon is trash compared to what they can craft themselves. It is impossible to make both group of people happy. If you hide the best crafting items behind dragons then people will start to get angry that their rewards are hidden behind a crafting mechanic they don't want to engage in.

I dunno, I've seen this argument before, but I'm not sure how valid it is for most people. There have been games I've found the crafting system engaging, and crafted, and there have been games with crafting where the crafting system hasn't interested me. With the former, of course I wanted weapons with an edge for my efforts, but since these things were always in tiers, I was happy enough to find something better when the right time came; with the latter, I don't recall being insanely jealous of hypothetical unknown players out there who were getting super-duper weapons via crafting.

Like, e.g., it was very pleasurable to craft a sword that gave me an edge for a few levels, but if I found a better sword just as that edge was starting to wear off, it's not like I would stamp my little feet and have a hissy fit.

As with a lot of these balance questions re. games, to me they only matter (and really matter) in a PvP context, and they matter only loosely in a PvE context (i.e. things can't be stupidly OP or out of whack, but it's not like balance has to be autistically precise).