Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I got rid of that on

Jan 8, 2009

 

[fantadomat]

They bought me coffee

How can we trust on your integrity any more?

Because he paid them back in the name of the codex and its honour.....with his whole body.

 

[Rivmusique]

Console wars are dumb.

 

[luinthoron]

Wouldn't a Humble Bundle-published game also be available on the Humble Bundle Store?

Yes, offering Epic keys only.

Nothing in that article suggests Epic exclusivity (yet), though.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

This looks like the perfect game for introspective hipsters

 

[Infinitron]

Codex preview by Tigranes: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-preview-disco-elysium.126878/

 

[Kasparov]

Oh yeah, Mikk hung out with Tigranes in a hipster cafe. Afterward he said that Tig was a real gentleman and an exemplary human being

 

[Abu Antar]

Oh yeah, Mikk hung out with Tigranes in a hipster cafe. Afterward he said that Tig was a real gentleman and an exemplary human being

What did you bribe him with? Not Doritos and Mountain Dew, I hope? He probably got him drunk.

 

[Kasparov]

Well, here’s the paradox - you could come by and see for yourself, but then you’d lose all credibility in the process

 

[fantadomat]

Well, here’s the paradox - you could come by and see for yourself, but then you’d lose all credibility in the process

Russian bitches and vodka? Also squatting competition?

 

[Fenix]

Well, here’s the paradox - you could come by and see for yourself, but then you’d lose all credibility in the process

That was elegant move. ))

 

[vota DC]

By the way 13th march was part 1 of Friday recap....how long it is? I mean more than half month to recap a single day?

 

[Zombra]

You have four attributes (intellect, psyche, fysique, and motorics) that go from 1-6. Each attribute governs six skills. So if you put 6 points into Intellect, all of your intellect skills start out at 6. If you have 1 Intellect, they all start out at 1. You also invest points into skills as you level up. However, the number of points you can put into a given skill is limited by your attribute score. So with 6 intellect, you can invest up to six points in each INT skill. With 1 intellect, you can only invest 1 point, so outside of bonuses, your base INT skills can't go above 2.

The next question is: what do the numbers mean? If I want my guy to be stylish, is a 3 in Savoir-Faire okay? Do I have to have 8 points in Authority before anyone will listen to me? Etc. And how many points are available to spend on stats at the start of the game? If it's only 8 points as in that example, how am I supposed to put a 6 in anything? 1/1/1/5 is the most extreme I could do.

 

[Kasparov]

You have four attributes (intellect, psyche, fysique, and motorics) that go from 1-6. Each attribute governs six skills. So if you put 6 points into Intellect, all of your intellect skills start out at 6. If you have 1 Intellect, they all start out at 1. You also invest points into skills as you level up. However, the number of points you can put into a given skill is limited by your attribute score. So with 6 intellect, you can invest up to six points in each INT skill. With 1 intellect, you can only invest 1 point, so outside of bonuses, your base INT skills can't go above 2.

The next question is: what do the numbers mean? If I want my guy to be stylish, is a 3 in Savoir-Faire okay? Do I have to have 8 points in Authority before anyone will listen to me? Etc. And how many points are available to spend on stats at the start of the game? If it's only 8 points as in that example, how am I supposed to put a 6 in anything? 1/1/1/5 is the most extreme I could do.

I've seen a few different screenshots of the character screen floating around the Internet - some are outdated and some are outright ancient (and some are photoshop mockups). Over time there have been different formulae on the table so at this point I wouldn't yet ascribe too much weight on any specific number. Balancing and all that. You could try to unscramble the pixellated blurry phone videos of people playing the game at a recent convention. You're all detectives, go on and detect!

 

[Zombra]

I wouldn't yet ascribe too much weight on any specific number.

Fair enough. I do hope there will be some kind of metrics explained in-game upon release though - I don't want this to be Age of Decadence all over again, where you have no idea what will work and what won't.

 

[Kasparov]

I wouldn't yet ascribe too much weight on any specific number.

Fair enough. I do hope there will be some kind of metrics explained in-game upon release though - I don't want this to be Age of Decadence all over again, where you have no idea what will work and what won't.

When you hover above checks you’ll get an estimate of how likely success will be

 

[Zombra]

When you hover above checks you’ll get at estimate of how likely success will be

Sounds Decadence-y. First you play the game, see what your odds are, then you load a save and spend your xp accordingly. It's not "not fun", but it's not ideal either. Oh well.

EDIT: See below, KVK is right, this does sound better.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

When you hover above checks you’ll get at estimate of how likely success will be

Sounds Decadence-y. First you play the game, see what your odds are, then you load a save and spend your xp accordingly. It's not "not fun", but it's not ideal either. Oh well.

Nah, AOD had hard skill checks. There were no rolls. There were no do-overs. There were no interesting failure states.

http://zaumstudio.com/2016/10/06/active-skill-checks/

White checks:

If you fail a white check you suffer damage (mental or physical), but nothing happens in the world, no negative consequences – just the lack of positive ones. You don’t “get” that wacky music, your partner tells you to stop trying to get him fired. The proverbial door in the dungeon remains closed, the treasure out of reach. The white check becomes greyed out. You can try again later once you’re better at it (put more points into the skill), or you can make the task easier by changing the environment.

But if you do succeed you get access to a special nook in the content: a bunch of clever things to say that build your character, or inadvertedly solving a problem somewhere else. You may even find an entirely new side-case to take on, or new project for your Thought Cabinet to process. And yes, even a bigger gun, we’re not above those. White checks are locked gates for content and rewards. (Which we think of as one and the same). Even finding the gates counts as progress. Part of the game is mapping out these “closed doors” and then returning later once you think you need what is behind them – or if you’re just curious.

Our Art Director compares white checks to using dynamite to mine more content out of the game. It’s relatively safe if you plan your rolls carefully.

Red checks:

If you roll this bad boy – THE NEGATIVE RESULT IS PLAYED OUT TOO. Say you were trying to come up with an idea and you fail a red check. You don’t just stand there clueless, you come up with a bad idea. A really bad one. An utterly idiotic one. Tell your friends to fuck off. Tell them all to fuck off because they’re “cramping you’re style.” Your character will not be able to tell the difference, they will think it’s a good idea. You the player are stuck saying something truly idiotic with a winning grin on your chartacter’s face – or doing something very dangerous.

You can always come back to white checks but red checks can only be rolled once: here and now. If you don’t they are lost forever. Think of red checks as forks in the path – if you don’t try it now you will never get the chance to. The suspect will leave the hallway, the train will leave the station. But you might fail if you do.

FAILURE IS FUN
Players almost always try red checks. The negative content is fuel for role playing, and it’s also – dare I say – fun. Failure puts you in the skin of your character. You can be embarrassing. Weak. Ridiculous. Full of yourself. Just plain wrong. Paranoid. Idiotic. Every director knows that actors build characters out of failures and fears, not heroics. We’ve noticed players instinctively feel the same way. They begin to search for red checks to fail at. Especially the right ones – the ones that fit their character. They do this for character building, but also because they’re curious of the outcome. It feels like playing with fire.

This adds an interesting effect to Skills and spending experience to improve them. It can be useful not to. It’s rewarding to be bad at some things because it produces interesting red check failures.

I think that will make for a very different style of play than AOD's save scumming/skill point hoarding.

 

[Kasparov]

When you hover above checks you’ll get at estimate of how likely success will be

Sounds Decadence-y. First you play the game, see what your odds are, then you load a save and spend your xp accordingly. It's not "not fun", but it's not ideal either. Oh well.

EDIT: See below, KVK is right, this does sound better.

Yeah, KVK did a good job of explaining the difference with how AoD did that.

Honestly I really liked the kind of checks in AoD, but I believe I’ve been pretty outspoken elsewhere on the forums about my opinion of the rigid nature of the system they used. In that sense I’m glad Disco went with rolls instead.

There’s more of an element of surprise every now and then. Yeah, you could fail something that had a “Pfft piece of cake” as the estimate for success, but this is where the design and writing differs from most other games and hopefully you’ll see the difference when you play. You could also succeed when you really needed it where the odds were stacked against you.

As to how it plays in-game, there’s an example where you use Savoire Faire (a kind of acrobatics/sneak skill) to pull off an acrobatic stunt. Before you attempt it you could estimate how likely you are to succeed. If you do see that it is unlikely, what you could do is rifle through your inventory and see whether you’ve brought along something that could give your reflexes a temporary edge or maybe you’re simply wearing something loose fitting (check our concept art for fashion tips, boys) that could make you trip and fall on your face (read: gives you a penalty on said check). Maybe comfortable and springy sneakers are better suited for that particular action that, say heavy leather cavalry boots.

In a different situation someone could have offered you pointers (in a dialogue) to better your odds for a specific situation and check. The adverse could also be the case - if you want to persuade somebody, but annoy them beforehand... you get where this is going.

So essentially you don’t have to save-scum, you might have to adjust your body chemistry, your dress for the occasion or your mindset instead. If it’s a red check you do not want to fail - you better prepare for it. If the challenge asks for a white check - you could try tour luck and if you fail just return when you’re better equipped for the challenge.

Hope this was verbose enough.

 

[vortex]

Can you have romance/affection in Disco Elysium?

 

[fantadomat]

Meh rolls for checks are shit. It is TT system that shouldn't be in a PC game. It takes that satisfaction of well build character and puts it on the luck.

 

[Butter]

Meh rolls for checks are shit. It is TT system that shouldn't be in a PC game. It takes that satisfaction of well build character and puts it on the luck.

It's fine if the game uses soft failure states. If the consequence for a bad roll is so bad that you're just going to reload a save and try again, it's a shit system.

 

[fantadomat]

Meh rolls for checks are shit. It is TT system that shouldn't be in a PC game. It takes that satisfaction of well build character and puts it on the luck.

It's fine if the game uses soft failure states. If the consequence for a bad roll is so bad that you're just going to reload a save and try again, it's a shit system.

People reload because they want to succeed and not because they failed hard. It will be quick load fest.

 

[Butter]

Meh rolls for checks are shit. It is TT system that shouldn't be in a PC game. It takes that satisfaction of well build character and puts it on the luck.

It's fine if the game uses soft failure states. If the consequence for a bad roll is so bad that you're just going to reload a save and try again, it's a shit system.

People reload because they want to succeed and not because they failed hard. It will be quick load fest.

You don't reload if the police start shooting at you in VtMB. You can evade them and then continue playing as normal. It's a soft fail state. People reload if they fail skill checks in Fallout 3 because the consequence for failing the skill check is you miss out on content.

 

[fantadomat]

Meh rolls for checks are shit. It is TT system that shouldn't be in a PC game. It takes that satisfaction of well build character and puts it on the luck.

It's fine if the game uses soft failure states. If the consequence for a bad roll is so bad that you're just going to reload a save and try again, it's a shit system.

People reload because they want to succeed and not because they failed hard. It will be quick load fest.

You don't reload if the police start shooting at you in VtMB. You can evade them and then continue playing as normal. It's a soft fail state. People reload if they fail skill checks in Fallout 3 because the consequence for failing the skill check is you miss out on content.

The fuck one have to do with the other?!?!?!?! In vampire you get shot by cops if you get sloppy and do something stupid. Then you just enter some building and everything is ok. There is no fucking die rolls or speech checks! In DE you won't be able to just get out of the building and renter to get another roll. Define "soft fail state" in die reliant dialogue heavy game.