Codex Interview: Josh Sawyer

[Delterius]

Well, I think the Skaen hold should be a good place for comparison. If I were to cut fights from the original game, it would be there.

 

[Bubbles]

We can just ask him again on Tuesday.

 

[Roguey]

Well, I think the Skaen hold should be a good place for comparison. If I were to cut fights from the original game, it would be there.

The Skaen temple is working as designed http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...expansion-thread.100006/page-114#post-4377861

 

[Bubbles]

Has Josh ever talked about Kickstarter/general RPG demographics the way Swen has? There might be some material for discussion there.

 

[Delterius]

Well, I think the Skaen hold should be a good place for comparison. If I were to cut fights from the original game, it would be there.

The Skaen temple is working as designed http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...expansion-thread.100006/page-114#post-4377861

Then it is badly designed?

 

[Roguey]

Then it is badly designed?

The intention is that unless you use the back entrance, you are going to suffer.

 

[Delterius]

Then it is badly designed?

The intention is that unless you use the back entrance, you are going to suffer.

A noble goal, except that we are faced with boredom and inanity where there should be pain. A handful of truly punishing ambushes would convey that point much more clearly than a bajillion of samey humanoid enemies. I'm not assaulting an enemy position head-on and suffering for it, but instead for playing through a badly designed stretch of the game. Pure and simple.

 

[Roguey]

A noble goal, except that we are faced with boredom and inanity where there should be pain. A handful of truly punishing ambushes would convey that point much more clearly than a bajillion of samey humanoid enemies. I'm not assaulting an enemy position head-on and suffering for it, but instead for playing through a badly designed stretch of the game. Pure and simple.

They didn't want it to be a nigh-unwinnable task for the majority of their players.

 

[Delterius]

A noble goal, except that we are faced with boredom and inanity where there should be pain. A handful of truly punishing ambushes would convey that point much more clearly than a bajillion of samey humanoid enemies. I'm not assaulting an enemy position head-on and suffering for it, but instead for playing through a badly designed stretch of the game. Pure and simple.

They didn't want it to be a nigh-unwinnable task for the majority of their players.

You flatter me but there's no need for that. This is why they put a lot of thought into the difficulty system. Unless you think that all fights which are of above average difficulty on normal or hard modes should be removed. There are a handful of those in-game. Some have even coined the term "Boss Fight" for that sort of thing and I hear gamers kind of expect those from time to time.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I agree that more inventive ways to set up combat encounters would have reduced the repetitiveness. I guess this is due to the area being part of their vertical slice, while they were still pretty inexperienced with the tools and with setting up encounters in general.

 

[Roguey]

You flatter me but there's no need for that. This is why they put a lot of thought into the difficulty system. Unless you think that all fights which are of above average difficulty on normal or hard modes should be removed. There are a handful of those in-game. Some have even coined the term "Boss Fight" for that sort of thing and I hear gamers kind of expect those from time to time.

The only boss fight they wanted in the temple is the optional one at the end. The rest is a tiring attrition slog (unless you go through the back like an attentive person).

 

[Delterius]

The only boss fight they wanted in the temple is the optional one at the end. The rest is a tiring attrition slog (unless you go through the back like an attentive person).

None of which actually disproves my proposition. So before this gets out of hand, let's go through our conversation, shall we?

I said the Skaen Temple was boring.

You said boring was intentional because I'm meant to 'suffer'.

I said suffered of boredom. So I proposed that instead of a string of samey encounters we could have fewer, more interesting and better designed ones. To, "suffer", in a way which is entertaining.

So you claimed that better and potentially punishing encounter design was out of the table in order to account for different skill levels.

I pointed out Boss Battles and Difficulty Modes exist, so it is not like the developers are averse to challenging you a bit more than usual for whatever reason.

Them only wanting a "Boss Battle" at the end might be true. Might just be a Cargo Cult measure to implement the trope of a long dungeon filled with trash to be picked, crowned with a harder battle at the end. Regardless, I think we are both aware I was proposing something different than what was delivered or intended.

And so we have it all. We reward players for passing the skill check at the backdoor and we punish them in a way that is in tune with our game's design. We actually make demands of their best resources in a battle of attrition, as the cultists make use of their home advantage against you. It doesn't have to be a series of boss battles, of course. All you need is fewer, better designed encounters instead of a slog.

 

[Roguey]

That area is literally not meant to be fun in any way to punish you for being inattentive, making it fun would be against their goals.

One could say that this is a pretty grognardy principle.

 

[Delterius]

 

[tuluse]

I just skimmed the thread, apologies if the questions are similar to ones already posted.


The beginning of PoE give a reasonable introduction to the game, but it's incredibly boring after the first play through, and make trying out different classes a huge chore. Are there any plans in poe2 to let players drop into the "game proper" with a freshly made character?

Often in PoE player agency was seemingly arbitrarily limited (not being able to join with peasants to murder Aloth and Aloth being forced into the party no matter your choices as prime examples). Are you going to trust players to decide how they want to react to situations more, or will the level of railroading be about the same? Not counting the main story.

Speaking of, the main story as far as I got in PoE seemed disconnected from anything actually happening in the game world. Will the story actually involve the player's actions in current events as Obsidian did so well in Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol or should we expect more weird dreams with no meaningful choices or consequences as the attempt at emotional engagement?

I found it hard to tell at a glance what was happening during battle in PoE. Creature palettes were too similar to the backgrounds and spell effects were more abstract and excessive compared to IE games. I had to spend a while paused slowly checking every character to tell what was going on often times. Are there any plans to improve visual feedback in PoE2?

Castle Raedric was one of the best parts of PoE, with many skill checks and letting players actually approach a situation in many interesting ways. Most of PoE is just a straight up combat crawl in comparison. Do you plan to have more branching situations and non-combat dungeon crawling or even Fallout style alternative paths with less/no combat in PoE2?

 

[tuluse]

Ohh just thought of a general one.

Do you think uneven content can provide a good experience or does the deeper and/or better content tend to make the weaker and/or shallower content look worse by comparison. As an example, do you think an RPG with a 4 really fleshed out companions and say 10 more shallow ones would work as the player would have more choices or not work because if they hate the fleshed out characters they feel robbed?

 

[Ninjerk]

tuluse just to avoid potentially having your question deflected (although I don't think this is something Josh would necessarily do), you didn't have to add Aloth to your party. It's also worth noting that in the developer commentary tracks included in the game that Raedric's Keep was, IIRC, along with Gilded Vale one of the last areas developed (Jorge Salgado gave a nice commentary on walking into the main Raedric area).

 

[tuluse]

tuluse just to avoid potentially having your question deflected (although I don't think this is something Josh would necessarily do), you didn't have to add Aloth to your party. It's also worth noting that in the developer commentary tracks included in the game that Raedric's Keep was, IIRC, along with Gilded Vale one of the last areas developed (Jorge Salgado gave a nice commentary on walking into the main Raedric area).

Unless it was patched out, I'm pretty sure you did. You could remove him after, but Aloth had to join.

I could be totally mis-remembering I suppose, but I'm sure Bubbles is going to do a bang up job editing the questions first anyways.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You could tell him that you prefer to travel light. There are no mandatory companions once you're out of Cilant Lis, if there were, this would break the Solo achievement. You have to be mistaken.

That area is literally not meant to be fun in any way to punish you for being inattentive, making it fun would be against their goals.

One could say that this is a pretty grognardy principle.

Given how difficult it is to find the key to the underground entrance from Dyrford Crossing, or alternatively, open that entrance without having a key, and that even then it is not looking like a "main" entrance at all, I'd rather say it's a case of bad dungeon design and not a case of "it's boring on purpose".

Did you play the beta at least, or watch a playthrough?

 

[Ninjerk]

You could tell him that you prefer to travel light. There are no mandatory companions once you're out of Cilant Lis, if there were, this would break the Solo achievement. You have to be mistaken.

Yup. I started dozens of TCS attempts shortly after release.

That area is literally not meant to be fun in any way to punish you for being inattentive, making it fun would be against their goals.

One could say that this is a pretty grognardy principle.

Given how difficult it is to find the key to the underground entrance from Dyrford Crossing, or alternatively, open that entrance without having a key, and that even then it is not looking like a "main" entrance at all, I'd rather say it's a case of bad dungeon design and not a case of "it's boring on purpose".

Did you play the beta at least, or watch a playthrough?

Oh, my dear child. You ask far too much.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Did he play the TTON beta? How would he made the game different? Is there a chance for them to partner up with InXile in the future in order to do the best CRPG ever and I mean Arcanum 2?

 

[Roguey]

Given how difficult it is to find the key to the underground entrance from Dyrford Crossing, or alternatively, open that entrance without having a key, and that even then it is not looking like a "main" entrance at all, I'd rather say it's a case of bad dungeon design and not a case of "it's boring on purpose".

Did you play the beta at least, or watch a playthrough?

My conclusion is based on the fact that I've seen multiple complaints about the Skaen Temple given directly to Josh and he's chosen not to touch it even after the "trash mob removal" pass (which some say went too far in at least one wilderness area).

 

[AwesomeButton]

Well I mean that even the so-called "non-back door" entrance isn't really a front entrance.

Regarding the wilderness areas, my personal opinion is that a half-empty map is better than one overcrowded with encounters which don't offer anything unique in terms of tactical challenge. I also think that the problem with wilderness areas comes from how small they are, in comparison to BGI/II wilderness areas.

 

[Sannom]

Will you be catching Sawyer before or after his talk at the GDC?

 

[Bubbles]

After.