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

[Prime Junta]

I don't get it. By increasing the skill after having failed the check, wouldn't you get both these things?

Yes you get both things.

I clearly expressed myself really badly. The mechanic is the same, but the player's thinking is not: am I putting a point in a skill primarily because I want the skill, or because I want the reroll? Sometimes it's because I want the reroll.

 

[barghwata]

I don't get it. By increasing the skill after having failed the check, wouldn't you get both these things?

Yes you get both things.

I clearly expressed myself really badly. The mechanic is the same, but the player's thinking is not: am I putting a point in a skill primarily because I want the skill, or because I want the reroll? Sometimes it's because I want the reroll.

This is quite dissapointing, but i can live with it if these occurences are rare in the game, are they tho?

 

[Jenkem]

ahh so it's a choose your own adventure book AND you get to simulate holding your finger between the pages... very clever

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Is there a demo i could try?

 

[Terenty]

Oh dear god here we go again ................... so the game will sometimes force you to put SP where you don't want just to be able to move on instead of giving you more diffcult or punishing ways of finishing the quests if you can't pass certain skill checks; without having to change your initial build, is that what you're saying?

There's always* a way to progress using one of your main skills, but there are skill checks you have to pass no matter what. The vomit endurance check for example. If you have 1 endurance, you'll fail unless you roll boxcars. Then you do some stuff and get one free retry, which you'll likely fail again. Then you get a Thought you can internalise, which dramatically improves your odds, raises the Endurance learning cap to 4 (it was 1 if your Physique is 1) and gives you another reroll (at that point your odds will be about even, assuming 1 Endurance). If you still fail, your only recourse is to put a pip in Endurance, which bumps your odds to about 2/3 and another reroll.

And yes if you're really unlucky you might have to do that a few more times, thereby ending up with a lot more Endurance than you planned. On the other hand playing with 1 Endurance is really hard because you only have one single miserable HP.

(There's a similar skill gate with Measurehead, on Physical Instrument or Rhetoric, but you don't need to do those if you've passed a couple of Perception checks elsewhere.)

So, yeah, you really might have to buy some skills you're not super interested in otherwise.

*usual disclaimers apply

This doesn't sound good tbh. Gating some side content with white checks is alright, but blocking the main quest with arbitrary skills you dont plan to raise is stupid.

What happened to their motto of failing is fun? I thought only red checks are used during significant moments with fun consequences, but such railroading is disappointing

 

[barghwata]

This doesn't sound good tbh. Gating some side content with white checks is alright, but blocking the main quest with arbitrary skills you dont plan to raise is stupid.

What happened to their motto of failing is fun? I thought only red checks are used during significant moments with fun consequences, but such railroading is disappointing

Indeed if there is alot of that in the game, it kills the whole failing is fun shtick, because it's almost like the developper kind of deemed certain builds to be unplayable or inacceptable so you're forced into having to spread your SP in certain ways just to advance, and that's unfortunate.

 

[Terenty]

This doesn't sound good tbh. Gating some side content with white checks is alright, but blocking the main quest with arbitrary skills you dont plan to raise is stupid.

What happened to their motto of failing is fun? I thought only red checks are used during significant moments with fun consequences, but such railroading is disappointing

Indeed if there is alot of that in the game, it kills the whole failing is fun shtick, because it's almost like the developper kind of deemed certain builds to be unplayable or inacceptable so you're forced into having to spread your SP in certain ways just to move on, and that's unfortunate.

This sounds like the antithesis of their "what kind of a cop are you?".

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

If you play like that, at the very least make a note of which important white checks you've failed and come back to them after you've bumped up that skill

The game keeps track of failed white checks in the quest log.

Oh dear god here we go again ................... so the game will sometimes force you to put SP where you don't want just to be able to move on instead of giving you more diffcult or punishing ways of finishing the quests if you can't pass certain skill checks; without having to change your initial build, is that what you're saying?

There's always* a way to progress using one of your main skills, but there are skill checks you have to pass no matter what. The vomit endurance check for example. If you have 1 endurance, you'll fail unless you roll boxcars. Then you do some stuff and get one free retry, which you'll likely fail again. Then you get a Thought you can internalise, which dramatically improves your odds, raises the Endurance learning cap to 4 (it was 1 if your Physique is 1) and gives you another reroll (at that point your odds will be about even, assuming 1 Endurance). If you still fail, your only recourse is to put a pip in Endurance, which bumps your odds to about 2/3 and another reroll.

And yes if you're really unlucky you might have to do that a few more times, thereby ending up with a lot more Endurance than you planned. On the other hand playing with 1 Endurance is really hard because you only have one single miserable HP.

(There's a similar skill gate with Measurehead, on Physical Instrument or Rhetoric, but you don't need to do those if you've passed a couple of Perception checks elsewhere.)

So, yeah, you really might have to buy some skills you're not super interested in otherwise.

*usual disclaimers apply

This doesn't sound good tbh. Gating some side content with white checks is alright, but blocking the main quest with arbitrary skills you dont plan to raise is stupid.

What happened to their motto of failing is fun? I thought only red checks are used during significant moments with fun consequences, but such railroading is disappointing

There is one example of this, not two, and it’s possible there are other alternative solutions that we haven’t found yet. They give you a bunch of different shots at that one example. It’s not a red check.

You need to perform a field autopsy without puking your guts out.
If you fail, you can grab some ammonia to make it easier, or wait a little while for the wind to shift to make it easier, or you’ll get a thought that makes it much easier. Also, you can absolutely just leave the body there.

 

[Terenty]

If you play like that, at the very least make a note of which important white checks you've failed and come back to them after you've bumped up that skill

The game keeps track of failed white checks in the quest log.

Oh dear god here we go again ................... so the game will sometimes force you to put SP where you don't want just to be able to move on instead of giving you more diffcult or punishing ways of finishing the quests if you can't pass certain skill checks; without having to change your initial build, is that what you're saying?

There's always* a way to progress using one of your main skills, but there are skill checks you have to pass no matter what. The vomit endurance check for example. If you have 1 endurance, you'll fail unless you roll boxcars. Then you do some stuff and get one free retry, which you'll likely fail again. Then you get a Thought you can internalise, which dramatically improves your odds, raises the Endurance learning cap to 4 (it was 1 if your Physique is 1) and gives you another reroll (at that point your odds will be about even, assuming 1 Endurance). If you still fail, your only recourse is to put a pip in Endurance, which bumps your odds to about 2/3 and another reroll.

And yes if you're really unlucky you might have to do that a few more times, thereby ending up with a lot more Endurance than you planned. On the other hand playing with 1 Endurance is really hard because you only have one single miserable HP.

(There's a similar skill gate with Measurehead, on Physical Instrument or Rhetoric, but you don't need to do those if you've passed a couple of Perception checks elsewhere.)

So, yeah, you really might have to buy some skills you're not super interested in otherwise.

*usual disclaimers apply

This doesn't sound good tbh. Gating some side content with white checks is alright, but blocking the main quest with arbitrary skills you dont plan to raise is stupid.

What happened to their motto of failing is fun? I thought only red checks are used during significant moments with fun consequences, but such railroading is disappointing

There is one example of this, not two, and it’s possible there are other alternative solutions that we haven’t found yet. They give you a bunch of different shots at that one example. It’s not a red check.

You need to perform a field autopsy without puking your guts out.
If you fail, you can grab some ammonia to make it easier, or wait a little while for the wind to shift to make it easier, or you’ll get a thought that makes it much easier. Also, you can absolutely just leave the body there.

Ok, these are two contradictory explanations from you and Prime Junta.

Can you continue the story or not without spending points on undesirable skills?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Ok, these are two contradictory explanations from you and Prime Junta.

Can you continue the story or not without spending points on undesirable skills?

Do you want to solve the case? Your partner will get pissed at you if you don’t deal with the body, and not dealing with it certainly makes you a bad cop, but you don’t have to.

Junta is telling you all his preferred playstyle here, but that’s all it is.

Edit: let me put it another way. There are a couple of checks on the first day that you’ll breeze through if you invested in fysique. If you used it as dump stat, you’ll need to get creative to solve these problems, either by avoiding the checks or by finding ways to make them easier. If you set your fysique at 1 and don’t put an extra point into endurance, you’re going to die every time you fail a check that causes you to lose health. So the game’s already incentivizing you pretty heavily to do that, corpse or no corpse.

 

[Terenty]

Edit: let me put it another way. There are a couple of checks on the first day that you’ll breeze through if you invested in fysique. If you used it as dump stat, you’ll need to get creative to solve these problems, either by avoiding the checks or by finding ways to make them easier. If you set your fysique at 1 and don’t put an extra point into endurance, you’re going to die every time you fail a check that causes you to lose health. So the game’s already incentivizing you pretty heavily to do that, corpse or no corpse.

And there's no way to avoid dying? Then its railroading, not incentivising.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Edit: let me put it another way. There are a couple of checks on the first day that you’ll breeze through if you invested in fysique. If you used it as dump stat, you’ll need to get creative to solve these problems, either by avoiding the checks or by finding ways to make them easier. If you set your fysique at 1 and don’t put an extra point into endurance, you’re going to die every time you fail a check that causes you to lose health. So the game’s already incentivizing you pretty heavily to do that, corpse or no corpse.

And there's no way to avoid dying? Then its railroading, not incentivising.

You gave yourself one hit point. More like letting you live with the consequences of your actions.

It would be like trying to play Fallout with 1 endurance. It’s possible to get through the game, but you’re gonna end up reloading a lot.

 

[Prime Junta]

Indeed if there is alot of that in the game, it kills the whole failing is fun shtick, because it's almost like the developper kind of deemed certain builds to be unplayable or inacceptable so you're forced into having to spread your SP in certain ways just to advance, and that's unfortunate.

Nope, it's not that strong. It happens from time to time, mostly through bad die rolls. There is one choke point of this type in the first day, namely the vomit check, and I explained how that works. With the other gates there are several paths to choose from.

(Huh, I didn't know that it's possible to progress without actually doing the autopsy. Sorry, my bad -- I was just assuming that it's a main quest gate.)

Spoiler

Still gonna hoard my skill points to reroll checks though. Na.

 

[Terenty]

Edit: let me put it another way. There are a couple of checks on the first day that you’ll breeze through if you invested in fysique. If you used it as dump stat, you’ll need to get creative to solve these problems, either by avoiding the checks or by finding ways to make them easier. If you set your fysique at 1 and don’t put an extra point into endurance, you’re going to die every time you fail a check that causes you to lose health. So the game’s already incentivizing you pretty heavily to do that, corpse or no corpse.

And there's no way to avoid dying? Then its railroading, not incentivising.

You gave yourself one hit point. More like letting you live with the consequences of your actions.

It would be like trying to play Fallout with 1 endurance. It’s possible to get through the game, but you’re gonna end up reloading a lot.

No, i created the character i wanted, per their advertising, but then they tell me you cant be that char, because we put this random block that you cant overcome without becoming another character

 

[Prime Junta]

If you set your fysique at 1 and don’t put an extra point into endurance, you’re going to die every time you fail a check that causes you to lose health.

I will add: if you set your Psyche at 1 and don't put a point in Volition, you're going to give up and lose every time you fail badly enough at anything to lose a Morale point. If you make a super fragile build, it's gonna be hard -- you're effectively one snake-eyes away from Game Over. But you absolutely can do that if you want to.

 

[Prime Junta]

This sounds like the antithesis of their "what kind of a cop are you?".

"What kind of cop are you?" doesn't mean that all builds are equally viable nor that it's impossible to fail at being a cop. Would you even want that? There is an actual game in there, with challenges and shit, it's not a visual novel for crying out loud.

 

[asterix]

ITT: Wah wah, all you get to do in this game is click through dialogue, where's the challenge?

Also ITT: What do you mean it's game over if I lose the only health point I chose to give myself???

 

[Terenty]

This sounds like the antithesis of their "what kind of a cop are you?".

"What kind of cop are you?" doesn't mean that all builds are equally viable nor that it's impossible to fail at being a cop. Would you even want that? There is an actual game in there, with challenges and shit, it's not a visual novel for crying out loud.

I actually dont know how to resolve this situation. On one hand nothing stops the devs from putting random skill checks here and there, on the other every build being equally viable doesn't sound fun either.

Maybe make it so that if you fail a skill check, then its possible to continue, but much more difficult

 

[ZVERMIX]

I'm actually thinking that a Psyche/Physique cop might be a good choice for a first playthrough. It's pretty straightforward and funny but you miss out on a lot of stuff because of lousy Perception and no running commentary from Encyclopedia. If you do Intellect/Motorics the second time it'll be a drastically different experience.

Don't you lose out on a lot of the lore if you have low Encyclopedia?
You'd think getting to know the game world is pretty important for a first run.

 

[Prime Junta]

I actually dont know how to resolve this situation. On one hand nothing stops the devs from putting random skill checks here and there, on the other every build being equally viable doesn't sound fun either.

It would suck if there weren't enough skill checks, nor enough alternative paths. But there are.

(You still might have to waste a skill point from time to time though. Suck it up bucko.)

Don't you lose out on a lot of the lore if you have low Encyclopedia?

Yes.

 

[fantadomat]

die rolls in PC games are cancer...

 

[luinthoron]

To quote their system's design ethos post:

All builds should not be viable, but all builds should be interesting.

 

[lobsterfrogman]

ITT: Wah wah, all you get to do in this game is click through dialogue, where's the challenge?

Also ITT: What do you mean it's game over if I lose the only health point I chose to give myself???

+1

We went from "Fuck this game for not being an RPG" to "Fuck this game for not being walking simulator" pretty quickly.

 

[Stakhanov]

This is going to be AoD's second coming: "Dumped endurance, died on the first skill check". "Dumped volition, died on the first skill check". "Dumped rhetoric, guess what?" Insert trailer showing dialogue checks with metal music.

 

[Prime Junta]

We went from "Fuck this game for not being an RPG" to "Fuck this game for not being walking simulator" pretty quickly.

Codex, don't ever change.