Game News Colony Ship RPG Update #3: Development Timetable, Systems Changes

[Goral]

(...) you don't know if your Persuasion 6 Streetwise 5 will be good enough to live up to your charachter's archetype, or if you would've instead been better with Streetwise 6 Persuasion 5 (...)

This is a bad example because in AoD there is a synergy between skills like these and all that matters is whether you have 11 persuasion and streetwise combined. So whether you have 5 S and 6 P or 6 S and 5 P the result will be the same.

 

[Aenra]

too bad he's still utterly convinced of his own infallibility

Are you from the rich, or from the dumb part of Europe? Which post of VD's gave you the impression he considers himself infallible?.. Are you sure you're reading what we're reading?

If one part of the hybridization is pretty much mandatory, it's not -really- a hybrid character, is it?

It must be the dumb part of Europe after all.. there are no "mandatory" builds in the sense you portray them. They've already stated why your group members will be so important: The game will be designed around each PC's having 'unique' skills the party will have need of. Diverse skills. No one-man/one-build show. No one-way ending, skill up accordingly. Now whether they achieve that or not, to be seen.. but being on the theoretical level as of now? Your point is moot.
Reading comprehension.

This is a bad example because in AoD

i think you missed his point; he was using an arbitrary example to say one could not know that, not in advance ( which is true )

 

[Zed]

so much talk about combat, gadgets and gizmos...

core background technology should revolve around food (tablets? breeding pens? what eco systems are in place), water (reservoir and filtering systems) and oxygen (the fact that you haven't even mentioned a massive greenhouse on the ship is ludicrous!)

the factions controlling this controls everything

 

[Xzylvador]

Are you from the rich, or from the dumb part of Europe?

Have you followed any political news? The rich part of Europe most frequently IS the dumbest part of Europe.

As for VD's high self-esteem: the rock paper shotgun interview, albeit amongs the most awesome gaming interviews ever, combined with the whole way AoD is designed and his immediate 'the players are wrong, not the design' reaction pretty much shout 'I know best'.
Mind you, he's free to think so and in no way obligated to cater to anyone thinking differently. It's a free countryworld after all.
On a personal level I actually agree with many of his points but think he went a bit overboard trying to make those points.

As for the rest, I was replying to Elhoim's post, you might have been able to figure that out since I quoted him in that same post. Reading comprehension, you should try it too.
Fact (well, popular opinion, I suppose) is that in AoD there was barely any leeway in the way you built your character. I was merely stating that giving more skill points does not automatically guarantee more personalization if those extra points are pretty much forced to be assigned to a certain type of build (which he seemed to imply would be combat).
And even if you go party-based there's no guarantee of more freedom. Much more likely, sure. But the game can still be designed in a way where you're pretty much forced to have X skills and X party members in order to succeed. I'm not saying it automatically will be. But I do hope they take at least some lessons from some of the critisism on AoD.
Your apparent fanboyism, while charming, is really not very producting to making a better game.

 

[Elhoim]

QFT.If one part of the hybridization is pretty much mandatory, it's not -really- a hybrid character, is it?
If you give twice the amount of skill points but it's already pretty much determined that half of those must be allocated to <combat skill X> in order to have a playable character, the player still only has the original amount to spend on creating his own original character and still has the 'must build exactly this way or fail' metagaming problem.

The combat points will progress naturally by fighting, no need to "allocate" anything. As was said, there is no skill points allocation, nor a hard limit on learning points like there was in AoD with SP. Plus it can also be thief/talker or several combinations of them. The hybridization will appear naturally depending on how you play, plus you can also play solo as a one man show. Will be more difficult but you will get more learning points and all the experience for yourself.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm glad VD picked it up as being a problem... But too bad he's still utterly convinced of his own infallibility and immediately points to the player as the problem instead of admitting there might be a flaw in his design...
One can only hope posts like Ismaul's make him see reason.

AoD has many design flaws and most of them are my fault, which doesn't mean that every little thing that rubs someone the wrong way is my fault. I'm well aware that some people, including you, are utterly convinced that the game was a guessing puzzle, but there are many people who played differently and didn't have this problem. So, is it a design flaw or not?

It reminds me of MotB's spirit meter thing: some people didn't have a problem with it, others couldn't play the game because of it. Or Fallout's time limit.

Fact (well, popular opinion, I suppose) is that in AoD there was barely any leeway in the way you built your character. I was merely stating that giving more skill points does not automatically guarantee more personalization if those extra points are pretty much forced to be assigned to a certain type of build (which he seemed to imply would be combat).

Take a look at these player-submitted builds:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/391044006147489617/6A621927F07A339F3575403E94E72C023EB61C0E/

Str 7, Dex 8, Con 6, Per 8, Int 7, Cha 5, bodycount 155
Hammer 8, Dodge 10, Critical Strike 6, Lore 8, Persuasion 8, Crafting 6, Streetwise 5, etc.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/394421705868950440/75C85ECCE7979E440D6445477A35523B8EE33473/

Str 5, Dex 9, Con 5, Per 8, Int 6, Cha 7, bodycount 109
Dagger 9, Dodge 9, Critical Strike 7, Alchemy 6, Streetwise 6, Impersonate 5, etc

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/382036806896257013/B00403C16CE17A55C23AF08305021966511D6E61/

Str 8, Dex 8, Con 6, Per 8, Int 7, Cha 4, bodycount 328, note that the character has no defense skill and is relying on Critical Strike instead.

Axe 9, Critical Strike 7, Crafting 10, Lore 8, Persuasion 6, Sneak 6

As for VD's high self-esteem...

It's not high self-esteem. I just don't give a fuck.

 

[Vault Dweller]

core background technology should revolve around food (tablets? breeding pens? what eco systems are in place), water (reservoir and filtering systems) and oxygen (the fact that you haven't even mentioned a massive greenhouse on the ship is ludicrous!)

Provided by the ship. So far I've mentioned only 1 of 16 locations.

the factions controlling this controls everything

Precisely.

 

[Xzylvador]

It's not high self-esteem. I just don't give a fuck.

To be quite honest and clear:

I wholeheartedly applaud your devotion and non-comformist stance. I meant it when I said you have every right to it.

Personally, I think I just suck at AoD... Which is kind of a new thing for me, being bad at a computer game that isn't FIFA or requires a controller.
I really WANT to like AoD, the storyfag in me is powerful and keeps pulling me towards it. But when I start a game, I struggle to continue and find myself not having fun playing it. And after all's said and done, fun is still the reason I play games.
It's... 'painful' to be confronted with the possibility that I've been more severely affected than I believed by all the streamlining and dumbing down that's been happening the past decade or two. I consider myself a very open-minded person but apparently I'm unable to wrap my mind around this one.
Any critisism I post is only because I want a game I can enjoy playing and try to offer an alternative view. Not the best view or the only right view, just a different one. And I don't expect it to be copied and adopted, but I do believe that a dialogue with different views is the best way to make progress of any kind.


Edit/add to avoid multiposting: ↓ My apologies for calling you a fanboy, it was uncalled for and a kneejerk reaction to what appeared to be calling other opinions dumb; my morning coffee probably hadn't kicked in yet.

 

[Aenra]

The rich part of Europe most frequently IS the dumbest part of Europe

Fist for that

Now as to the rest.. your posts are occasionally insightful enough, so if you do not mind me saying (ie to another, i wouldn't have), branding anyone of an opposite opinion as a 'fanboy' is hardly conducive; that's one. Regarding the interview/VD's stance and your understanding of it, i think you've got it a bit wrong; just another Codexer speaking his mind, albeit this one with the balls to do it in public and nevermind his sales -no matter how slightly- hinging on said interview's receival.
We agree on the lack of leeway. I have myself criticised it; in fact, my very first AoD post was to shit on Elhoim 'defending' the way the templates actually work (if i loved the game despite that, different issue). The point however is that i) this is a different game, ii) a different game wherein someone already admitted to you (or as good as) that things were a bit too.. strict the last time around, hence changes. To my mind, this entails a 'so far so good' understanding, more so since i see them focusing on "how" and "why" they both erred and plan to remedy. But that's just me.

edit: ninja'ed by Obersturmführer

 

[Vault Dweller]

I really WANT to like AoD, the storyfag in me is powerful and keeps pulling me towards it. But when I start a game, I struggle to continue and find myself not having fun playing it. And after all's said and done, fun is still the reason I play games.

No arguing here. I knew that the game won't be for everyone and I don't mean it in an elitist way. Our brand of 'fun' is very specific and aimed at a very specific audience, so it's easy to lose people who might have liked the game if it were a bit different. I honestly regret that you can't enjoy but hopefully you'll like the CSG more.

Any critisism I post is only because I want a game I can enjoy playing and try to offer an alternative view. Not the best view or the only right view, just a different one. And I don't expect it to be copied and adopted, but I do believe that a dialogue with different views is the best way to make progress of any kind..

Criticism is always welcome and we don't take it the wrong way.

 

[himmy]

First of all, it includes a development timetable, indicating a final release date of late 2020.

This game is going to have a present-day setting by the time it launches.

 

[Kev Inkline]

"Engine familiarity and systems/tools porting IF using Unreal 4"

What does this 'if' mean? You guys not considering sticking with Torque are you?

It's still an unknown factor. I assume that we won't run into any real issues with Unreal 4 but I don't know for sure.

But you might run into some un...real issues!

 

[ColCol]

First of all, it includes a development timetable, indicating a final release date of late 2020.

This game is going to have a present-day setting by the time it launches.

 

[Lurker King]

indicating a final release date of late 2020. Yes, you read that right.

They plan to more than double their development speed? Will the game have less content or are they estimating time savings with UE and their experience from AoD?

This 10 years thing is a myth. Vault Dweller basically spent four years working the game as a hobby in his spare time. He didn’t know how to coded, write, made a crappy engine that he needed to abandon, didn’t have an artist, not free time, etc. In the remaining six years he found a new engine (Torque, which is crap), the rest of the ITS members, and more players eager to provide feedback and promote the game. Besides, part of team also worked on Dead State, which delayed AoD. Now, from the beginning, he know how to code, have a proper team (let’s not forget that Oscar was a newbie at the beginning too), a fan base, will use a proper engine, is working fulltime and part of his team will not work at another game simultaneously.

 

[Vault Dweller]

But I see the meta-gaming "problem" very differently. Some hack 'n slash games are all about the character build meta-game, but the one that you could say is problematic is of a different type. It's not like you say a "get all the content" meta-game; that meta-game settles in for replays, and that was fun and that's the point of replays afterall, to find content you missed, alternative paths. Those meta-games are intended, part of the game.

The meta-game that is a design "problem" and could be improved upon is more of a "I have an archetype I want to be able to roleplay but what stats do I need?" meta-game. Skill points in AoD are limited, and that makes it so the player has to anticipate (predict if he can't assess in-game) what skill ranks he needs to be able to effectively play his chosen archetype/character concept. But because skill ranks are rather abstract, it is very hard to anticipate what rank is required for a certain challenge, you don't know if your Persuasion 6 Streetwise 5 will be good enough to live up to your charachter's archetype, or if you would've instead been better with Streetwise 6 Persuasion 5. Knowning that would mean having the designer's knowledge or having already played the game through this path. So yeah players meta-game, but it's because of the abstractness of the system, which makes players unable to assess the challenge they face, and therefore look for ways to gain control, such as skill hoarding (which I've done, and would've rather not). This is lessened in games with less stingy skill point availability, because players've got spare points to cover character build "mistakes".

Yes and no.

I think the biggest mistake was designing the game around specialists, which made hybrids (i.e. characters that everyone wants to play) the Hard Mode forcing the players to metagame. At the same time, had we balanced the game around the hybrids, the combat specialists would have been the easy mode, which is something we wanted to avoid. Now, if you play a combat specialist, the game is challenging (once you get the basics), if you play a non-combat specialist, it's fairly easy.

Roughly you need 3-4 skills or 2 if you aren't sure. Weapon/Defense or Weapon/Defense/Crafting or Alchemy/CS. Persuasion/Streetwise or Persuasion/Streetwise/Impersonate/Etiquette/Trading/Lore. Our non-combat checks give you plenty of room (basically expected level for your character type minus 20%, so if we expect you to have 7 in Persuasion, we'll check for 5, etc. Plus in most cases we do check for the sum of two skills, so it doesn't matter if you have 7 and 6 or 6 and 7. In general, very few people (maybe 5% at most) complain about the talker being unable to progress.

That is what could be improved upon from the AoD design, IMO. But that doesn't mean you need to give too much skill points. And I think there are ways to compensate for this without going to the extreme of dropping skill checks or content gating like you say, since it's not the content-hunting meta-game that's problematic. Rather, it's the incertainty of what a skill of rank X means in the game, that makes it harder to build a roleplaying character like the player envisions. It's the disconnect between player knowledge and designer knowledge that has to be compensated with a way for the player to assess challenges (which is why we have things like monster levels), or with a way for the player to gain a small edge to compensate for a character build that's almost good enough to face the challenge.

Even if we go with 1-3 skill system and label them "you suck; half way there, buddy; you did it! yay!" but lock content behind checks, someone will still want to know if he should raise this skill to 3 or the other one.

The real "problem" was the gated content as it was a radical departure from the traditional design (many couldn't even wrap their heads around the fact that there were fights they couldn't win). They could accept missing out on minor things like the conversation with the blind archer in PST but not big chunks of content or entire locations.

So either we go with a traditional design or we stick with gated content and the problem will remain.

Fallout did the last part with drugs that could temporarily boost your stats/skills. I previously suggested a "Skill pool" like the Effort pool from Torment, from which you spend points in checks to choose which paths open for your character (or in other words boost a skill). If your skill is lower than required, maybe you can compensate by spending more points from your pool, so that allows for some flexibility in character builds, while still having mechanical consequences for choices (you now have less points in your pool and can't compensate for other weaknesses). And that is just one option among others (and poorly formulated and underdeveloped at that).

Kinda goes against the core design, no? I mean why bother with the gated content if we give the player means to circumvent it via boostable stats/skills or 'effort' or 'fate' points a-la Arcanum?

That's why I feel that 'increase by use' is the best fit that removes the urge to meta-game and makes it easier to accept your character's limitations.

 

[Lurker King]

The gated content is a consequence of taking stat and skills seriously. In 99% of cRPGs, the character building is only relevant for combat, while dialogue checks and choices are fluffy and exploration is there just to make you feel awesome, which is retarded. Someone design a game in which even exploration involves stat and skill checks, and players go crazy. It’s obvious that people will complain about the new game even with less gated content because the problem is that they want to play a cRPG without skill checks and failure, because that is what most cRPGs do.

 

[Zed]

Gated content is alright if there are alternative ways to grow strong, return, and beat it. In AoD there are a lot of choices and paths, but there aren't a lot of "simultaneously opened" areas. (Think De'arnis Hold//Trademeet//Umar hills from Act 2 BG2). Areas where you can choose and pick, leave and return. A player can still try to tackle one area from start to finish, but that would be harder than if the player would bite off the "easy" parts of all areas first. Another dimension to this equation is having areas be more or less adapted for character archetypes. A scientist could favor Area A, so he does that first being going to Area B and C, which would have been a lot tougher if not impossible if he hadn't done A first. IMO this is the best possible way to design progression and to allow players themselves to choose their challenges.

 

[Lurker King]

And even if you go party-based there's no guarantee of more freedom. Much more likely, sure. But the game can still be designed in a way where you're pretty much forced to have X skills and X party members in order to succeed. I'm not saying it automatically will be. But I do hope they take at least some lessons from some of the critisism on AoD.

When you say you want more freedom, what you really want to say is that you want to explore the game world without failures in skill checks. Now, let’s think about it. What this means is that the game world should be deprived of any realism for the sake of exploration, and that the player shouldn’t be hindered by failures. This type of covert popamolism is what most players accept nowadays.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Gated content is alright if there are alternative ways to grow strong, return, and beat it. In AoD there are a lot of choices and paths, but there aren't a lot of "simultaneously opened" areas. (Think De'arnis Hold//Trademeet//Umar hills from Act 2 BG2). Areas where you can choose and pick, leave and return. A player can still try to tackle one area from start to finish, but that would be harder than if the player would bite off the "easy" parts of all areas first. Another dimension to this equation is having areas be more or less adapted for character archetypes. A scientist could favor Area A, so he does that first being going to Area B and C, which would have been a lot tougher if not impossible if he hadn't done A first. IMO this is the best possible way to design progression and to allow players themselves to choose their challenges.

It's not gated content, it's a typical open world design. Can't go to this area yet, return when you improve your skills.

 

[Zed]

Gated content is alright if there are alternative ways to grow strong, return, and beat it. In AoD there are a lot of choices and paths, but there aren't a lot of "simultaneously opened" areas. (Think De'arnis Hold//Trademeet//Umar hills from Act 2 BG2). Areas where you can choose and pick, leave and return. A player can still try to tackle one area from start to finish, but that would be harder than if the player would bite off the "easy" parts of all areas first. Another dimension to this equation is having areas be more or less adapted for character archetypes. A scientist could favor Area A, so he does that first being going to Area B and C, which would have been a lot tougher if not impossible if he hadn't done A first. IMO this is the best possible way to design progression and to allow players themselves to choose their challenges.

It's not gated content, it's a typical open world design. Can't go to this area yet, return when you improve your skills.

I guess, but 'open world design' make it sounds like a TES sandbox. I felt like AoD was a step down from FO because it was less open (i.e. it's more linear), and for the same reason (and many others) PoE was a step down from BG2. It feels like a key "big RPG" design component being discarded in otherwise C&C-heavy games.

 

[orcinator]

Combat will have a bigger role

worry

 

[Vault Dweller]

It won't be a combat heavy game like Pillars, but the 'talk your way through the game' path won't be the easy mode anymore. In AoD it was necessary because most talkers couldn't fight, thus even ambushes had to be handled with care. The CSG is a party-based game so every party will be able to hold their own when attacked (although not every party will be able to win every fight), so we no longer have to be careful when bringing some faction's hammer down on you.

 

[orcinator]

It won't be a combat heavy game like Pillars, but the 'talk your way through the game' path won't be the easy mode anymore. In AoD it was necessary because most talkers couldn't fight, thus even ambushes had to be handled with care. The CSG is a party-based game so every party will be able to hold their own when attacked (although not every party will be able to win every fight), so we no longer have to be careful when bringing some faction's hammer down on you.

I'm more worried about combat being shit than combat being too hard if you don't specialize in it.

I assume there won't be a trash mob camp every five meters and you'll be able to bypass it with skill checks, but I'm not exactly excited about the parts where I will have to fight for whatever reason.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Shit because you didn't like AoD combat or shit because you think that this combat will be worse?

 

[Lurker King]

I felt like AoD was a step down from FO because it was less open (i.e. it's more linear), and for the same reason (and many others) PoE was a step down from BG2. It feels like a key "big RPG" design component being discarded in many otherwise C&C-heavy games.

That is an unfair and simplistic comparison. Obsidian took players money with the promise of delivering a spiritual successor of BG2 with better writing. Instead, they delivered an uninspired husk with popamole combat system. Iron Tower Studio never promised to make a spiritual successor of Fallout, neither took players' money with this promise in mind. It was their first game, based on VD’s view and inspired by many different sources, from Darklands and FO, to Prelude to Darkness and Gothic. The fact that you assume that every cRPG should be like FO suggest how your view of the world is egotistical and limited. Moreover, less exploration doesn’t mean more linearity. Skyrm has more exploration than both FO1 and FO2 combined, but is linear. AoD has less exploration than FO, but is much more reactive.