Interview Chris Avellone is still pretty mad about Obsidian

[FeelTheRads]

What he's saying is that different builds benefit from pumping different stats.

So? Is that a revolution in RPG design or what?

No, what he's saying is that no matter how you pump those stats you'll get a "viable" build.

If it means delivering what was promised in the KS campaign, he failed.

I'm also curious what EXTREMELY competent means, which is how it was initially worded by shilltron who's trying hard to shill without showing it.

 

[Excidium II]

No, what he's saying is that no matter how you pump those stats you'll get a "viable" build.

I guess it depends on how you define viable.

 

[Fairfax]

I'm also curious what EXTREMELY competent means, which is how it was initially worded by shilltron who's trying hard to shill without showing it.

I remember Sawyerists saying the best thing about him is that he delivers more polished games and on time, yet PoE was delayed and came out as a buggy mess.

 

[Excidium II]

I'm also curious what EXTREMELY competent means, which is how it was initially worded by shilltron who's trying hard to shill without showing it.

I remember Sawyerists saying the best thing about him is that he delivers more polished games and on time, yet PoE was delayed and came out as a buggy mess.

What does Sawyer have to do with it being buggy as fuck? He wasn't Programmer or QA lead. His failure was releasing the game with the systems in a really sorry state. Ciphers OP as fuck, Paladins worthless, Mage spells outclassed by Druid...

 

[Roguey]

I remember Sawyerists saying the best thing about him is that he delivers more polished games and on time, yet PoE was delayed and came out as a buggy mess.

Who said that? Not me. Icewind Dale 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity shipped with problems (that weren't his fault).

He is a great project manager and people who have worked with him have said as much. New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity eventually had their rough edges smoothed over.

 

[Starwars]

My developer can beat up your developer!

 

[Ninjerk]

What he's saying is that different builds benefit from pumping different stats.

So? Is that a revolution in RPG design or what?

In his GDC talk, he presented a screenshot of Paladinvagina with her stats modded and mocked the idea that someone had dumped stats to make a specialized build.

 

[Excidium II]

^ He has this fixation with giving companions larpy stats to support multiple builds. Just ends up making them subpar by spreading too much.

 

[Fairfax]

I remember Sawyerists saying the best thing about him is that he delivers more polished games and on time, yet PoE was delayed and came out as a buggy mess.

Who said that? Not me. Icewind Dale 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity shipped with problems (that weren't his fault).

Wasn't calling you out. I just remember seeing that kind of comment on Obsidian forums, reddit, even here.

He is a great project manager and people who have worked with him have said as much.

People who disagree won't say it in public, so there's no way to know if that's true.

My point was: how does one call him competent for how PoE? By what metric was he "extremely competent"?
If his only job was to the deliver what was promised in the KS campaign, he failed. Was delivering a good game enough? That's subjective, and doesn't justify the game's failures and undelivered promises.

You said it yourself: he delivered IWD3. I don't see how that's a success or speaks to his competence, because that wasn't the pitch and nobody asked for it.

 

[Roguey]

In his GDC talk, he presented a screenshot of Paladinvagina with her stats modded and mocked the idea that someone had dumped stats to make a specialized build.

He mocked the idea that it was "better/superior/whichever adjective the modder used to describe it" when it makes her better at doing one thing at the expense of everything else (he also thought it was silly to dump her perception even though she's an avian godlike and her superior vision is noted in the text).

Companions were all intentionally given jack-of-all-trades distributions so you could play them as you wished without sacrificing story content.

People who disagree won't say it in public, so there's no way to know if that's true.

If he was a big enough asshole, some anonymous dev would talk about it, as they tend to do (see Chris Parker in that infamous post, or Brian Mitsoda)

 

[Ninjerk]

"specialized build" It's right there in the quote. Don't pretend to offer a counter-argument by paraphrasing my post.

 

[Volourn]

"What does Sawyer have to do with it being buggy as fuck?"

"Who said that? Not me. Icewind Dale 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity shipped with problems (that weren't his fault).

He is a great project manager and people who have worked with him have said as much. New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity eventually had their rough edges smoothed over."

ARE YOU ON CRACK. He is the Project MANAGER. It *is* his fault. His job is to make sure things are done fukkin' properly. That includes dealing with bugginess. HOLY FUKKS.

 

[Prime Junta]

On the contrary: a careful selection of attributes is a very important part of making the character concept you have in mind work.

What you're actually saying is: if you push the buttons put in front of you, you will succeed.
That is what happens when "Every choice of character should be supported by the character system"

A frontline muscle wizard will have a very different stat distribution and spell selection than a back-row glass cannon wizard. And so on.

Yes, you pushed the buttons in a different order. Hurray, very fun.

And if you push the buttons in the wrong order for your ranged paladin or muscle wizard, you'll fail.

Seriously: the AD&D attribute system is so dumb it might as well not be there. Given some fixed number of stat points, there is only one optimal way to distribute them per class. You might as well drop them altogether and just give each class the bonuses from the stats instead, since anyone with an ounce of sense will be distributing the stat points the same way every time.

(Unless you have infinite rolling for stats so you can get your 18/00 18 18 3 3 3 fighter instead. Such strategy, so depth.)

 

[Excidium II]

Seriously: the AD&D attribute system is so dumb it might as well not be there. Given some fixed number of stat points, there is only one optimal way to distribute them per class. You might as well drop them altogether and just give each class the bonuses from the stats instead, since anyone with an ounce of sense will be distributing the stat points the same way every time.

(Unless you have infinite rolling for stats so you can get your 18/00 18 18 3 3 3 fighter instead. Such strategy, so depth.)

It's dumb but there's also the flaw of a poor videogame adaptation.

 

[Prime Junta]

^ He has this fixation with giving companions larpy stats to support multiple builds. Just ends up making them subpar by spreading too much.

They will be a level ahead of anyone you hire at the inn though, which usually more than makes up for the sub-optimal stat distribution. It is true you can't bend the companions into some particular hyper-specialised builds, but that's what hirelings are for.

 

[Excidium II]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

 

[Roguey]

"He is the Project MANAGER. It *is* his fault. His job is to make sure things are done fukkin' properly. That includes dealing with bugginess."

Icewind Dale 2 - Inherited from a lead designer who quit because he believed it would have been an embarrassment on his record, was on it for a few months before getting back on The Black Hound, a lot of problems stemming from the extremely short schedule.
NWN2 - Inherited from a lead designer who quit because he used the position to springboard himself into a job for Bioware (which he used to springboard himself into Bethesda once it started looking far more appealing), spent all his time on triage because it was a total mess and they had months to go until they had to ship something
New Vegas - Bethesda noticed that were doing such a good job that they decided to move up the release date by a few weeks
Pillars of Eternity - If it was up to him, they wouldn't have gone that wild with features with only 29 months.

"specialized build" It's right there in the quote. Don't pretend to offer a counter-argument by paraphrasing my post.

Josh has no issue with the concept of specialized builds, as you seemed to suggest.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

That would be pretty cool. The way I'd do it is I'd connect the personality and background with the stats, kind of like in Arcanum but even more so. Would be hard to do without getting into a real writing mess though...

 

[FeelTheRads]

And if you push the buttons in the wrong order for your ranged paladin or muscle wizard, you'll fail.

Fail at what? If you still get a viable build you haven't failed anything. I know Sawyerist's consider a build failed if you need to reload the game 1 time, but not everybody is as brain damaged.

No, I don't care about Sawyer's desire to allow snipers who exclusively use pocket knives to be on the same level as every other build.

This is what he wants to do (otherwise not happy enough!!!) and, like I said multiple times, it's a thing you can only do with a stupid, simplistic system, which is PoE's case.

Sure, DnD is so bad because certain builds use certain attributes* but PoE is great because no matter how you choose the stats you still get a build.

*lul wut? And I wasn't aware DnD has only attributes? Yeah, not as complex as the maximum-2 variables for anything system of PoE.

 

[Excidium II]

^ doesn't know what he talks about (typical codexer in an rpg systems discussion)

 

[Lurker King]

For the record, I'm still butthurt about PoE.

We need a “glittering gem of hatred” button.

 

[Lurker King]

Depends on what you mean by 'wrong choices' All classes should be viable otherwise why even have them?Making joke classes that lead to a dead end is shit game design. What is needed is perhaps a punishment for shitty distribution of skills etc. when leveling(such as putting skills into might as a wizard) making the player work with the ROLE he picked rather than the Bethesda "I can max everything out no matter what I pick" which truly is shit design. Also certain classes could require more precise control in order to get the most out of, such as those advanced ones you can find in Wizardry and Jap blobbers.

All options should be viable, though some should be more or less optimal or 'easy'. None should be inherently a dead end, though of course if someone makes a non-balanced party and/or puts their points into skills without thinking as to how the character is supposed to play and how the player intends to use them then by all means that is a legitimate 'dead end' which can make progression brutally hard or even impossible. Though in that case it's not due to some inherent deliberate 'trap' on the path of the designer as the system is fully transparent and only the end user is to blame.

That is exactly what I said. The problem is by traps Sawyer didn’t mean just useless classes, but also the possibility of making a shitty character.

 

[Excidium II]

^ wrong

also butthurt.

 

[Grunker]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

I'm with you man. Level1NPC for BG2 is about the only thing that really works like that.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah but using hirelings means missing out content and interactions. I'm still waiting for someone to make a CRPG that has best of both worlds, where you make all your party but assign personality and background to them.

I'm with you man. Level1NPC for BG2 is about the only thing that really works like that.

Storm of Zehir also maybe? You give them personality with alignment at least, but ofc it only changes fluff dialogue (same with many [skill] options).