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

[Prime Junta]

Just saw that the stat checks are done with random dice rolls. Not sure how I feel about that.

Dice, in RPG? What has the world come to?

 

[Wunderbar]

Random stat checks is a cancerous mechanic.

 

[JDR13]

Just saw that the stat checks are done with random dice rolls. Not sure how I feel about that.

Dice, in RPG? What has the world come to?

I don't mind it in combat, but, in dialogue, I prefer hard checks against the level that the skill is at. I'm not a fan of failing a 90% chance of success because of RNG.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I've played it for an hour and it was good, but I'm still prepared for it to turn out shit.

Eh? How have you played it already?

He wrote a whole feature about it for the world’s most prestigious (occasionally fascist adjacent) CRPG site. Excuse me, magazine.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=11127

Prime Junta also got to play an older build a couple of years ago when he visited their HQ in Estonia—he wrote a big piece about it. Pretty sure ZA/UM had to show him everything because he knows the communist secret handshake.

Just saw that the stat checks are done with random dice rolls. Not sure how I feel about that.

It’s a role playing game, which means you have to roll the dice. I understand why many people might prefer hard checks, but they’ve designed the system so that you won’t feel screwed over if you get a bad roll.

Based on everything they’ve said—and all the previews I’ve read—they do this in two ways.

First, the more common, less important white checks can be repeated after you put an additional point into that particular skill. So if you get a bad roll you can just circle back to it later rather than feeling compelled to save scum.

Second, the higher stakes skill checks, which they call red checks, you only get one chance at. But as they’ve stressed repeatedly, failing these checks is often more fun than succeeding at them.

Here are the best early game examples that I’ve seen so far in the previews:

Spoiler

You try to hit on a sexy lady. If you fail the check, your character panics and can’t think of a good pickup line. Instead, he mumbles out, “I want to make fuck with you,” and then you have to try to minimize your embarrassment. If you succeed at the check, nothing too remarkable happens (though maybe there will be more consequences down the line). Mainly, your character just doesn’t embarrass himself.

Then there’s the red check for skipping out on your hotel bill—a savoir-faire check. If you succeed, it sounds like you deflect and sort of stylishly sneak away from the hotel manager. But if you fail the check? It means you lack the savoir-faire to make a graceful exit, so you handle the situation with the opposite of aplomb. You catch the asshole manager’s attention, then jump backwards through the air while giving him the finger (with both hands I think). Then you slip and accidentally knock over a nice old lady in a wheelchair.

I’m very tired so I don’t think I expressed either of these very well. You can read accounts that are better at communicating the game’s sense of humor in many of the previews. IIRC ZA/UM has also posted screenshots with some of these failed red check punchlines.

tl;dr Disco’s done a lot to ameliorate the downsides of dice-driven skill checks. Besides, if they used hard checks rather than dice rolls everyone would bash Disco Elysium like they do with AoD.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People already rationalizing shit mechanics and it's not even out yet

 

[Prime Junta]

Random stat checks is a cancerous mechanic.

All generalisations are false.

 

[Lithium Flower]

The point of random checks is that a lot of the skill checks allow you to "fail forward," meaning the failure advances the story with a less desirable outcome than a success ("you tried to punch a guy in the face but he catches your hand and now the tables are turned - now what do you do?" as opposed to "you miss lmao!"). This should be intuitively familiar to most PnP players. You are supposed to live with the consequence of every choice you make. Ironically, in many ways Disco appears to simulate the flow of PnP roleplaying more accurately more CRPGs that often miss the forest for the tress, so to speak.

The lack of segregation between is combat and regular actions is also something that - contrary to the sperging of many ignoramuseseses in this thread - is present in several PnP systems and personally gives me a massive throbbing erection. There is more stuff out there besides D&D, folks, and even D&D wouldn't function with, for example, hard checks.

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't mind it in combat, but, in dialogue, I prefer hard checks against the level that the skill is at. I'm not a fan of failing a 90% chance of success because of RNG.

Robert just mentioned that each skill has 50 to 500 checks in the game. That means there are thousands of them. With no trad combat, the skill checks take the place of hit rolls and saves as a gameplay feature; as stated there is even a retry mechanism for most of them, with a cost (put a point in the skill). The game really wouldn’t work with static threshold checks.

Whether and to what extent this makes up for not having trad RPG combat as a gameplay element is a different question, but the RNG is there very much for a reason.

 

[JDR13]

He wrote a whole feature about it for the world’s most prestigious (occasionally fascist adjacent) CRPG site. Excuse me, magazine.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=11127

Prime Junta also got to play an older build a couple of years ago when he visited their HQ in Estonia—he wrote a big piece about it. Pretty sure ZA/UM had to show him everything because he knows the communist secret handshake.

I've been avoiding previews for fear of spoilers, but I'm curious about the game world. I know it's some kind of pseudo-70's setting, but is it entirely realistic or are there any kind of fantasy or sci-fi influences?

 

[Lithium Flower]

He wrote a whole feature about it for the world’s most prestigious (occasionally fascist adjacent) CRPG site. Excuse me, magazine.

https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=11127

Prime Junta also got to play an older build a couple of years ago when he visited their HQ in Estonia—he wrote a big piece about it. Pretty sure ZA/UM had to show him everything because he knows the communist secret handshake.

I've been avoiding previews for fear of spoilers, but I'm curious about the game world. I know it's some kind of pseudo-70's setting, but is it entirely realistic or are there any kind of fantasy or sci-fi influences?

https://zaumstudio.com/2016/07/12/benefits-modern-fantasy-world/

TL;DR it is a kind of mundane fantasy world (so no conventional supernatural elements) that has progressed to the point roughly analogous to our modernity and that the devs supposedly developed thousands of years of history for. Some of the updates suggest that a lot of the tech has progressed different but arrived at similar conclusions. You've got motor carriages instead of cars, hard ceramic bodysuits for body armor, etc

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Fuck hard checks.

 

[Wunderbar]

I understand why many people might prefer hard checks, but they’ve designed the system so that you won’t feel screwed over if you get a bad roll.
First, the more common, less important white checks can be repeated after you put an additional point into that particular skill.
Second, the higher stakes skill checks, which they call red checks, you only get one chance at. But as they’ve stressed repeatedly, failing these checks is often more fun than succeeding at them.
Here are the best early game examples that I’ve seen so far in the previews:
If you succeed at the check, nothing too remarkable happens (though maybe there will be more consequences down the line). Mainly, your character just doesn’t embarrass himself.
Then there’s the red check for skipping out on your hotel bill—a savoir-faire check. If you succeed, it sounds like you deflect and sort of stylishly sneak away from the hotel manager. But if you fail the check? It means you slip and accidentally knock over a nice old lady in a wheelchair.

let me get this straight.
Stat checks are random, and there are two kinds of them - more important, and less important.
Less important checks can be repeated (which is a band-aid solution of save-scumming), and more important checks don't matter because your character succeeds anyway, albeit in a clumsy fashion.

Wtf is that.

 

[Lithium Flower]

let me get this straight.
Stat checks are random, and there are two kinds of them - more important, and less important.
Less important checks can be repeated (which is a band-aid solution of save-scumming), and more important checks don't matter because your character succeeds anyway, albeit in a clumsy fashion.

Wtf is that.

I'm going to let someone else answer re: repeatable checks because I don't know enough about them, but for the "fail forward stuff," no, you do not "succeed anyway." Again, the example I used in the post above is you trying to punch someone and them catching your fist - that's an example straight from the trailer. The example from the previews that Kyl highlighted (lady in wheelchair) was a very technical success that introduced a more ruinous complication than the original problem. That is the whole idea behind failing forward - the consequences of your failure snowball into a bigger challenge with higher stakes.

 

[Kasparov]

I come bearing gifts.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I come bearing gifts.

he hearted, pinned, and liked his own comment

 

[Prime Junta]

I've been avoiding previews for fear of spoilers, but I'm curious about the game world. I know it's some kind of pseudo-70's setting, but is it entirely realistic or are there any kind of fantasy or sci-fi influences?

The game world is from Marat Sar's tabletop campaign which ran for 13 years, starting from an age analogous to Pharaonic Egypt and proceeding through the centuries to something not too distant from ours. The history emerged with the campaign. It's not exactly pseudo-70s although the visual styles are definitely like it. Some things are very much like in our world -- political movements for example -- but some things are very much not; there was no WW2 and no Holocaust so fascists never became the comic-book bad guys they're in ours; there was a Communist revolution but it failed before anything like the USSR could emerge, so neither is Communism. There was no Stonewall and no gay rights movement, so society is in many ways more conservative than ours, but there are countercultures pushing against it. Technology is different too; there are motor vehicles but they're not cars, they're how they would look if you made a 1914 motor-car with 1970s aesthetics.

And yes there are fantasy elements. The most immediately obvious one is the structure of the world: it consists of stable islands called "isolas" in a formless nothingness called the Pale; it is possible to traverse the Pale but it does very strange things to you. I'm sure there's other stuff there too that will throw you for a loop if you entirely discount the fantastic or the supernatural as possible explanations for things -- but it's not in-your-face; I don't think anyone's going to start shooting fireballs or laser guns.

let me get this straight.
Stat checks are random, and there are two kinds of them - more important, and less important.
Less important checks can be repeated (which is a band-aid solution of save-scumming), and more important checks don't matter because your character succeeds anyway, albeit in a clumsy fashion.

No, it doesn't work that way. Red (non-repeatable) checks aren't necessarily more important; it just means you only ever get one shot at them. Some white checks block progress in the main quest -- you'll have to find a way to pass or circumvent them even if you're absolute shit at them. For example -- and I don't think this is a spoiler at this point, it's been thoroughly explained in various previews by now -- to get the case started you need to get the corpse out of the tree; to be able to do that, you need to examine it; and to do that you have to not toss your cookies from the smell. That's a white "Endurance" check, and if you have shit physique, you will need to be either lucky or creative to pass it. So that's one very important white check.

I'm going to let someone else answer re: repeatable checks because I don't know enough about them, but for the "fail forward stuff," no, you do not "succeed anyway." Again, the example I used in the post above is you trying to punch someone and them catching your fist - that's an example straight from the trailer. The example from the previews that Kyl highlighted (lady in wheelchair) was a very technical success that introduced a more ruinous complication than the original problem. That is the whole idea behind failing forward - the consequences of your failure snowball into a bigger challenge with higher stakes.

Failing a red check means that you didn't succeed in your intent, and something else happened instead. Usually it's something with immediate negative consequences -- you embarrass and hurt yourself, you abjectly and hilariously fail at impressing the girl with your game, the bullet does not go where you meant, causing a ... complication with what it does hit. This introduces unexpected complications as well as of course defining your character. There's nothing like embarrassment and failure and how you deal with them that truly defines who you are. Do you square your shoulders and clean up the mess you made, put on your shades and make it look like you meant it that way, apologise profusely and try to make amends, or something else? That's what the "what kind of cop are you?" schtick is all about.

 

[Kasparov]

Okay. So the console release is very hush hush, but you heard it here first.

 

[Kev Inkline]

The disgusting stench of fedora hats stained with greasy ponytails and smelling strongly of totally cocaine laced cigarillos (in reality full of window putty and ground glass) permeates this thread thoroughly

You say that like it's a bad thing?

 

[Momock]

First, the more common, less important white checks can be repeated after you put an additional point into that particular skill. So if you get a bad roll you can just circle back to it later rather than feeling compelled to save scum.

But you can savescum anyway, so you'll do it. It sounds so fucking stupid.

Well, at least they're concious about the players hoarding skill points for when they're needed with the "put a point in the skill to reroll" thing. I guess I'll give it a chance.

if they used hard checks rather than dice rolls everyone would bash Disco Elysium like they do with AoD.

So what?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

if they used hard checks rather than dice rolls everyone would bash Disco Elysium like they do with AoD.

People bash AoD because it's very on rails after you create your character. It has nothing to do with hard checks, but lack of branching.

 

[Prime Junta]

But you can savescum anyway, so you'll do it. It sounds so fucking stupid.

If you wanna savescum, savescum. Dialogues are the gameplay counterpart of combat encounters anyway.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Is the trailer's narrator also in the game?

Hope not, he's really bad.

 

[Molina]

First, the more common, less important white checks can be repeated after you put an additional point into that particular skill. So if you get a bad roll you can just circle back to it later rather than feeling compelled to save scum.

But you can savescum anyway, so you'll do it. It sounds so fucking stupid.

Well, at least they're concious about the players hoarding skill points for when they're needed with the "put a point in the skill to reroll" thing. I guess I'll give it a chance.

if they used hard checks rather than dice rolls everyone would bash Disco Elysium like they do with AoD.

So what?

Don't buy the game and don't piss us off.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I mean, if you really want to savescum ~38 times until you roll a perfect 12 to pass a check you only have a 2.6% shot at, it may take a while. Probably faster to find another way to accomplish your goal within the game. If our recent odyssey through Sawyerism has taught us anything, it’s that trying to stop “degenerate gameplay” usually just makes the game worse. Besides, I always side with any kind of degeneracy purely on principle.

Dice rolls are the heart and soul of tabletop. You need to introduce an element of randomness to keep everyone on their toes. With Disco Elysium, it feels like they’re shooting for a one on one campaign with the world’s most overqualified DM. Sounds good to me.

Dice rolls are problematic in CRPGs when they’re purely binary, e.g. when they gate content. Succeed, you open up something new, fail and nothing happens. In Disco with the Furies, dice rolls help decide how the story will branch. Succeed, you do what you were trying to do, fail and you do something else that’s a hell of a lot more embarrassing. Either way the game is giving you new content.

 

[fantadomat]

Dice rolls are the heart and soul of tabletop.

Then go and play a tabletop game! The fuck are you doing here then???