Interview Dishonored Interview: Players Without Clues Getting Lost

[TwinkieGorilla]

All Bethesda retards want to do is wander around aimlessly anyway, why not just let them?

 

[Grunker]

Yeah, it's insane how D&D is the system of choice in youth clubs when teaching young people role-playing games but when you insert it into a computer games that do all calculations for you automatically, it suddenly becomes this insanely complex beast which no adult without 10 years of role-playing experience can understand.

I have a fucking 12-year-old in the youth club I work in as a study-job - he can barely spell and goes to extra hours of math after school because he's behind and he understands D&D just fine.

 

[Infinitron]

All Bethesda retards want to do is wander around aimlessly anyway, why not just let them?

 

[Jaesun]

All Bethesda retards want to do is wander around aimlessly anyway, why not just let them?

 

[Jasede]

Yeah, it's insane how D&D is the system of choice in youth clubs when teaching young people role-playing games but when you insert it into a computer games that do all calculations for you automatically, it suddenly becomes this insanely complex beast which no adult without 10 years of role-playing experience can understand.

I have a fucking 12-year-old in the youth club I work in as a study-job - he can barely spell and goes to extra hours of math after school because he's behind and he understands D&D just fine.

What really gets me is when people try to understand THAC0 and fail as if they were trying to get into quantum physics or something.

 

[Black]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezjh9YdqwU4

 

[Grunker]

Yeah, it's insane how D&D is the system of choice in youth clubs when teaching young people role-playing games but when you insert it into a computer games that do all calculations for you automatically, it suddenly becomes this insanely complex beast which no adult without 10 years of role-playing experience can understand.

I have a fucking 12-year-old in the youth club I work in as a study-job - he can barely spell and goes to extra hours of math after school because he's behind and he understands D&D just fine.

What really gets me is when people try to understand THAC0 and fail as if they were trying to get into quantum physics or something.

The problem with THAC0 isn't that it is hard to understand, it's that its overly complex. Systems need to be as easy to auto-reference as possible, and THAC0 is needlessly complicated. You could do exactly what THAC0 does - mechanically the same - without the backwards table-thing.

THAC0 is stupid, not because the concept is hard to understand, but because it takes time to auto-reference when it doesn't need to.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezjh9YdqwU4

Nice comments there. The underclass is becoming restless.

 

[Mrowak]

"You misunderstand me; I'm talking about the player, not the player-character. A good RPG should allow a player to pick build and roleplay it satisfactorily. In Arcanum, for example, if you rolled a guns-build, you're screwed. It ends up being a "bad decision" on the player part. So if the game presents so many number of skills, all of those skills should be useful from start to finish of the game and those skills should represent viable builds. There shouldn't be "bad" builds."

Edit: So, if people are too dumb to figure out that you need to put points in a skill and figure out which stats and other skills support it, how the fuck do you expect them to find Caius Cosades?

The guy from the quote has a point though - all builds should be useful. They don't have to be useful all the time and for the same tasks, but if you allow the player to play a gunslinger and force him to invest shitloadz of points into firearms, and then it turns out this is the worst character for... well... everything, there's something wrong with character progression balance.

 

[Mrowak]

Yeah, it's insane how D&D is the system of choice in youth clubs when teaching young people role-playing games but when you insert it into a computer games that do all calculations for you automatically, it suddenly becomes this insanely complex beast which no adult without 10 years of role-playing experience can understand.

I have a fucking 12-year-old in the youth club I work in as a study-job - he can barely spell and goes to extra hours of math after school because he's behind and he understands D&D just fine.

What really gets me is when people try to understand THAC0 and fail as if they were trying to get into quantum physics or something.

Let's be fair here - it really is counter-intuitive. There's nothing all that complex in calculation backwards from 20 to -10... but why should you want to have that if you can have a simpler, more intuitive system. There's no virtue in being contrived.

 

[Vault Dweller]

"You misunderstand me; I'm talking about the player, not the player-character. A good RPG should allow a player to pick build and roleplay it satisfactorily. In Arcanum, for example, if you rolled a guns-build, you're screwed. It ends up being a "bad decision" on the player part. So if the game presents so many number of skills, all of those skills should be useful from start to finish of the game and those skills should represent viable builds. There shouldn't be "bad" builds."

Edit: So, if people are too dumb to figure out that you need to put points in a skill and figure out which stats and other skills support it, how the fuck do you expect them to find Caius Cosades?

The guy from the quote has a point though - all builds should be useful. They don't have to be useful all the time and for the same tasks, but if you allow the player to play a gunslinger and force him to invest shitloadz of points into firearms, and then it turns out this is the worst character for... well... everything, there's something wrong with character progression balance.

Eh? Gunslingers are awesome. Sure, they may be less efficient at killing than harm-spamming mages, which was an unbalanced spell, but they are pretty damn good overall.

 

[Gruia]

FU Bethesda!
damn, no kickstarter = compromise.
You want to make gamers better, not go down to their level for fucks saaaaaaaaake!
this is not an Iphone game, where you buy it for 5 bucks, you get frustrated in 5 minutes, and you delete it forever. Learning curve of 2h hello.
Dark souls lets you die 100 times on a map area till you get it.

 

[Jasede]

Thac0 is the way it is to make it less complex, not more.
I admit, though, that the solution they went with in 3rd edition is even more elegant and intuitive and removes the need for subtraction.

Yeah, I thought Thac0 was intuitive and elegant!

So you have a Thac0 of 18 and this monster has an AC of 7. 18 - 7 = 11, so you need to roll 11 to hit. Simple and elegant. But addition is even easier than subtraction so I will admit that the 3rd ed is more accessible. Still, it really isn't hard to figure out.

Thac0 - AC = roll you need to make. Very simple and straightforward, don't you agree? It's not much harder or less elegant than 3rd ed, which is
AC - AB = roll you need to make. ... come to think of it, that's still subtraction...


Now that I think about it, explain to me how Thac0 was more complex when it's as simple as I described.

 

[tuluse]

"You misunderstand me; I'm talking about the player, not the player-character. A good RPG should allow a player to pick build and roleplay it satisfactorily. In Arcanum, for example, if you rolled a guns-build, you're screwed. It ends up being a "bad decision" on the player part. So if the game presents so many number of skills, all of those skills should be useful from start to finish of the game and those skills should represent viable builds. There shouldn't be "bad" builds."

Edit: So, if people are too dumb to figure out that you need to put points in a skill and figure out which stats and other skills support it, how the fuck do you expect them to find Caius Cosades?

The guy from the quote has a point though - all builds should be useful. They don't have to be useful all the time and for the same tasks, but if you allow the player to play a gunslinger and force him to invest shitloadz of points into firearms, and then it turns out this is the worst character for... well... everything, there's something wrong with character progression balance.

Eh? Gunslingers are awesome. Sure, they may be less efficient at killing than harm-spamming mages, which was an unbalanced spell, but they are pretty damn good overall.

I'm doing a playthrough of Arcanum right now where the only offensive skill I've put points into is "throwing." I have a boomerang, and I make grenades. This has to be pretty much the worst combat build someone can make, and I'm progressing through the game just fine. There is no way a character build in Arcanum is "screwed" unless you just put 1 point in everything.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Jasede

You need to subtract stuff, which is twice as hard as adding.

 

[Outlander]

Some nerd on Reddit fiddled with some Steam registries and uncovered the cut content from the main game DLC packs for Dishonored aimed at the same kind of retards that can't find their way in a videogame's map:

Shadow Rat Pack
Backstreet Butcher Pack
Arcane Assassin Pack
Acrobatic Killer Pack

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/doom-...leaked-prey-2-may-had-a-closed-pc-beta-phase/

 

[Jasede]

But subtracting is just adding a negative number.

 

[Grunker]

Now that I think about it, explain to me how Thac0 was more complex when it's as simple as I described.

Because you can do the same via addition (if you can do something via addition instead of subtraction, do it) AND you need to look up a table/memorize a table to figure out your own THAC0?

It's in the AD&D mission statement that complexity was a goal, not a way to reach a goal. That is one of the most stupid ways to design a system.

It's not like it's a big fucking deal, I just had to point it out since you called people who didn't understand it out...

Case in point: The kid I mentioned from before has literally no issues understanding D&D - when we played AD&D for nostalgia, he never really got THAC0.

 

[Whisper]

Where is the news? This is not even funny anymore. It stopped to be funny when years ago I tried WoW and someone told that "quest helper" addon is a must. I don't even wanna get started with various boss helper addons what were required to do "raiding". It was not all that bad though, at least I got laughs imagining an addon which would play the game on their behalf. But then I realised in BGs that it has been already done. The grinding bots.

On a side note, why they need to make the game "accessible" when every moron of the grand masses will play the game with playthrough help from internet?

This question is easy to answer.

Better graphics, more voice-overs, more animations = more $ required = broader player base. Lowest common denominator.

 

[Whisper]

Games of old:

Some idiots are given total freedom, but cant find even 1 choice out of millions - "you are not our target group, FPS that way".

New games = "game needs to be accessible to idiots, we dont care if this destroys game for everyone else".

 

[Vault Dweller]

But subtracting is just adding a negative number.

Easy for you to say! You're clearly a man of great learnings, but games should be accessible to all, not just to those who went to universities to learn about negative numbers. THINK OF THE 99%!!!

 

[Jasede]

Grunker

All right, I'll give you that, but you still have to look up/memorize something to make AB work in 3rd edition: the AB growth of each class. 1/2 for mages, 3/4th for rogues and clerics and full AB for the fighter types. But I already admitted it was more elegant in 3rd ed, since that's less to remember.

Still, I wasn't calling people out- my remark merely meant "Another thing that's amusing in the same vein is when people try to understand Thac0 on, say, Gamefaqs." as they end up making it out to be the hardest thing in the world when really, as I have shown (Thac0 - AC = roll) it's not.

 

[tuluse]

Games of old:

Some idiots are given total freedom, but cant find even 1 choice out of millions - "you are not our target group, FPS that way".

New games = "game needs to be accessible to idiots, we dont care if this destroys game for everyone else".

I believe they said in another interview that the PC version will let you turn all this stuff off.

 

[Jasede]

That'd be amazing.
Although it's still niggling that there even is a need for this option in the first place.

 

[Black]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezjh9YdqwU4

Nice comments there. The underclass is becoming restless.

Try this one- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMV8fViUj-o
Games are now made for idiots like this one.