George Ziets opening a new RPG studio - Digimancy Entertainment

[Nano]

G Ziets ever got a chance to play Pillars of Eternity? If so, what did you think of it?

 

[hexer]

Hi G Ziets ! Happy to hear you're starting on your own!
I'm intrigued by your mention of RPG hybrids as I'm a big fan of Nier games which mix RPG with many other genres together.
Were you thinking of making your games something like that ?
Thank you and all the best!

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

G Ziets ever got a chance to play Pillars of Eternity? If so, what did you think of it?

If he liked it, he would've said so.

If he didn't like it, he would remain silent.

He didn't like it. He liked PK instead, as he said earlier in the thread. Eat shit, Sawyer ball-lickers.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hope somebody learned his lesson here.

At any rate, back to the game. Mr. G Ziets , can your game, liek, not be shit? With love, RPG Codex. K thanx bye.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I’d happily drop everything for a Ravenloft RPG. In fact, a number of the WotC IPs would be fantastic, like Dark Sun and Planescape.

Now now, you're just teasing us good sir.

This is stripper twerking on your crotch levels of tease here.

 

[Life of the Party]

I’m a fan of strategy games (especially grand strategy

You're making Victoria 3, aren't you?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Fuck. I want to troop through NWN2 vanilla and end on MotB. What class should I play?

Jesus, you say that, but you don’t—you really don’t. Just skip directly to MotB.

I've played MotB and never got past the first chapter in NWN2. I never touched SoZ, so I kind of want to go through all of them. See if the NWN2 fuss is true or it being horribly shit is overblown. But yeah just remembering the camera of NWN2 is making me rethink my options. Maybe I'll continue playing DiRT Rally instead.

NWN2 OC is pretty bad but it's passable for a play through. The problem with it is that it feels like it was intended to be babby's first D&D campaign for people new to the genre. The amount of cliches they shoved in it is really jarring. It feels like a cornucopia of things you've seen done much better in other games. There's really nothing worse than a group of smart and talented people trying to make a generic product on purpose. It makes the whole thing even more dour than if it was done by actual hacks. With Bethesda, you know the devs themselves are idiots so there's a certain sincerity to their ineptitude and dreadful writing. The OC is not as bad as if it was written by Bethesda but some places in it you can just sense the contempt the people at Obsidian had for their own game as they were making it.

 

[Neanderthal]

I'd say that the game improves considerably in the second and third acts act, but could still use some fat trimming. However there are some genuinely original, well made and powerful bits and bobs throughout the game. Nolaloth, the siege, the trial and the evidence gathering, the Guardians genesis etc.

Tedious mediocrity with occasional flashes of brilliance.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah it's not a flat-line of mediocrity it has some decent moments, and some decent characters, like Sand.

 

[Lilura]

I thought Khelgar was funny. It's a pity he didn't have voiced lines in SoZ, too.

 

[Roguey]

I thought Khelgar was funny. It's a pity he didn't have voiced lines in SoZ, too.

This is for the best because SoZ had no budget. They had to use bargain bin actors/their own developers for voice over.

 

[G Ziets]

Hi G Ziets ! Happy to hear you're starting on your own!
I'm intrigued by your mention of RPG hybrids as I'm a big fan of Nier games which mix RPG with many other genres together.
Were you thinking of making your games something like that ?
Thank you and all the best!

Thanks! I’m only familiar with Nier Automata, but we’re unlikely to make an action or hack-and-slashy game. We may combine elements from different genres and sub-genres though.

 

[G Ziets]

Fuck. I want to troop through NWN2 vanilla and end on MotB. What class should I play?

Jaesun made a pretty good build, should allow you to pass all stat checks in both OC an MotB. I've only used it for the expansion though.
http://nwn2db.com/build/?644

For me, RPG hybrids are games with strong RPG elements (solid narrative, choices and consequences, character management, etc.) but nontraditional gameplay. A good example would be King of Dragon Pass. Personally, I’m a fan of strategy games (especially grand strategy and turn-based strategy), so my hybrid ideas often borrow elements from that genre, or at least use them as a starting point.

Any recent games you'd recommend? Or at least some all-time personal favorites.

Loved Mask of the Betrayer, can't wait to see your next game.

Crusader Kings 2 is mentioned earlier in this thread – it’s a pretty solid game with interesting RPG elements. If you liked King of Dragon Pass, a spiritual successor was recently released in the same setting called Six Ages - https://store.steampowered.com/app/881420/Six_Ages_Ride_Like_the_Wind/. I haven’t tried it yet, mainly for lack of time, but am looking forward to giving it a try, especially now that it’s out on PC. If you want to go waaay back to old-school favorites, one of the first games I played with a combination of strategy and RPG mechanics was Sword of Aragon. I spent many, many hours in that game as a kid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Aragon

 

[G Ziets]

I’ve currently got a document full of RPG and RPG-hybrid pitches. We’ve started prototyping one of them

So, RPG or RPG hybrid ?
What does RPG hybrid even mean for you, an adventure game with RPG elements, Quest For Glory-like or a RPG with dumbed down mechanism ?

For me, RPG hybrids are games with strong RPG elements (solid narrative, choices and consequences, character management, etc.) but nontraditional gameplay. A good example would be King of Dragon Pass. Personally, I’m a fan of strategy games (especially grand strategy and turn-based strategy), so my hybrid ideas often borrow elements from that genre, or at least use them as a starting point.

That is an interesting post. Have you played games like Crusader kings? There the RPG elements come right to the fore in the form of the Regent design but in an inverse of traditional RPG mechanics; it is interesting that the events shape the regents and not the player choice i.e. the player does not choose (in most cases) what trait they will gain but it is attached to them by their choices. Are you planning to develop that kind of an RPG?

Also, what do you think of games like Alpha protocol, where the dialogue is constructed so that you have to read it to reply in an informed way and not by "skill choice" tags? Is this something you'd say you will have in your games?

I’ve played Crusader Kings 2 and liked it, but it’s not a direct inspiration for the current game, which may borrow some strategy elements but won’t be a kingdom ruler game. Assigning traits based on events and player choices is an interesting mechanic – I’ve seen it in the Total War series too, among others. It’s too early to say for sure whether we’ll use anything similar.

One thing I like about the Alpha Protocol dialogues is that they keep moving forward, more like conversations in real life. It’s a marked contrast to conversations in most RPGs, which are structured more like an interrogation, with a set of questions the player can ask (over and over again if need be) and little sense of dynamism in the scene. Alpha Protocol style dialogue doesn’t work for every game, but it’s something I wouldn't mind seeing more often.

 

[Fairfax]

G Ziets Are you considering an OGL ruleset for your game? Could make it easier to pitch something to WotC later.

 

[Xeon]

I can understand the appeal of Alpha Protocol's dialogue but I really hope its not implemented for games, it sucks for none english speakers. I either had to reload to see what the choices were or just said fuck it and went with whatever I got because I got fed up by loading.

Alpha Protocol sequel or spiritual successor please?

 

[agris]

G Ziets speaking of interesting implementations of dialogue, are you aware of The Council? It’s a very interesting take on dialogue-as-combat with a nod towards the “keeping it moving” aspects of AP’s dialogue that you like so much.

I highly recommend the first two episodes (they’re short), I think you would appreciate them as a study in novel conversation mechanics, if not outright fun.

 

[frajaq]

G Ziets make sure to put pretty elves in your games!!!

 

[Neanderthal]

G Ziets make sure to put pretty elves in your games!!!

And then allow us to kill and burn them.

 

[Viata]

Indeed. If you can't kill elves, the game sucks.

 

[fantadomat]

G Ziets make sure to put pretty elves in your games!!!

And then allow us to kill and burn them.

Ahh dwarfs and their overcompensating about being tall as a elf baby.

 

[G Ziets]

G Ziets Are you considering an OGL ruleset for your game? Could make it easier to pitch something to WotC later.

It's an interesting idea - depends upon the direction we go with the current game. If we end up leaning more traditional RPG, it’s possible. I don’t know a lot about how OGL works, so I’d need to look into it more.

 

[G Ziets]

I can understand the appeal of Alpha Protocol's dialogue but I really hope its not implemented for games, it sucks for none english speakers. I either had to reload to see what the choices were or just said fuck it and went with whatever I got because I got fed up by loading.

Alpha Protocol sequel or spiritual successor please?

If the problem was the timer, I don't consider that a critical component of that dialogue style - or at least not the part that I like. I appreciated the fact that the dialogues kept moving forward structurally (that is, you couldn't loop back repeatedly to the same questions - instead, player responses were actual decisions about how to move the conversation forward). You could achieve the same effect without the timer, albeit with a little less tension / excitement.

 

[G Ziets]

G Ziets speaking of interesting implementations of dialogue, are you aware of The Council? It’s a very interesting take on dialogue-as-combat with a nod towards the “keeping it moving” aspects of AP’s dialogue that you like so much.

I highly recommend the first two episodes (they’re short), I think you would appreciate them as a study in novel conversation mechanics, if not outright fun.

I have not played it, but you're right - it looks like a similar sort of dialogue system, possibly without the timer and incorporating some skill reactivity? Thanks for the reference!

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

G Ziets Are you considering an OGL ruleset for your game? Could make it easier to pitch something to WotC later.

It's an interesting idea - depends upon the direction we go with the current game. If we end up leaning more traditional RPG, it’s possible. I don’t know a lot about how OGL works, so I’d need to look into it more.

Ask JarlFrank or Solasta guys for that. They have some experience with OGL.