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Incline Josh Sawyer appreciation station

vortex

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The Activision deal isn't finished yet, not that it matters, since Sawyer doesn't care about Arcanum and Diablo. Ziggurat Interactive owns Darklands.
Maybe you don't know him as you used to. Saywer changed a lot. Prepare for something unthinkable.
 
Last edited:

0sacred

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How has Sawyer changed?

his skill as a game designer is directly proportional to the time he spends playing (A)D&D. D&D got him his first job in the industry, and working on D&D products put his skills to the best use. As he started to invest more time into hipster shit like cycling, bitches, tattoos, drinking and partying, his abilities declined.

Then he tried to be smarter than everyone and create a better roleplaying system than D&D, instead of being grateful for all the good things it had done for him. Classic case of hubris.
 

Hagashager

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How has Sawyer changed?

his skill as a game designer is directly proportional to the time he spends playing (A)D&D. D&D got him his first job in the industry, and working on D&D products put his skills to the best use. As he started to invest more time into hipster shit like cycling, bitches, tattoos, drinking and partying, his abilities declined.

Then he tried to be smarter than everyone and create a better roleplaying system than D&D, instead of being grateful for all the good things it had done for him. Classic case of hubris.
To be fair, he didn't just leave DnD, DnD very definitely left him. WotC current philosophy is so far gone even Sawyer's Neo-Liberal lifestyle would still be too problematic.

He dared to make a historical video-game set during the Age of Discovery that didn't also involve relentlessly flagellating Europeans for the slave trade and colonization.
 

0sacred

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To be fair, he didn't just leave DnD, DnD very definitely left him. WotC current philosophy is so far gone even Sawyer's Neo-Liberal lifestyle would still be too problematic.

He dared to make a historical video-game set during the Age of Discovery that didn't also involve relentlessly flagellating Europeans for the slave trade and colonization.

could have made a based OGL product then :troll:
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
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How has Sawyer changed?

his skill as a game designer is directly proportional to the time he spends playing (A)D&D. D&D got him his first job in the industry, and working on D&D products put his skills to the best use. As he started to invest more time into hipster shit like cycling, bitches, tattoos, drinking and partying, his abilities declined.

Then he tried to be smarter than everyone and create a better roleplaying system than D&D, instead of being grateful for all the good things it had done for him. Classic case of hubris.
To be fair, he didn't just leave DnD, DnD very definitely left him. WotC current philosophy is so far gone even Sawyer's Neo-Liberal lifestyle would still be too problematic.
I disagree with this statement ser. Have you seen his Twitter feed? And Vax passport?

By the black gods of the void, tis foul.
 

Hagashager

Educated
Joined
Nov 24, 2022
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637
How has Sawyer changed?

his skill as a game designer is directly proportional to the time he spends playing (A)D&D. D&D got him his first job in the industry, and working on D&D products put his skills to the best use. As he started to invest more time into hipster shit like cycling, bitches, tattoos, drinking and partying, his abilities declined.

Then he tried to be smarter than everyone and create a better roleplaying system than D&D, instead of being grateful for all the good things it had done for him. Classic case of hubris.
To be fair, he didn't just leave DnD, DnD very definitely left him. WotC current philosophy is so far gone even Sawyer's Neo-Liberal lifestyle would still be too problematic.
I disagree with this statement ser. Have you seen his Twitter feed? And Vax passport?

By the black gods of the void, tis foul.
I do not have Twitter and never will. On a scale from "hilarious" to "become a nihilist" how bad is it?
 

0sacred

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As he started to invest more time into hipster shit like cycling, bitches, tattoos, drinking and partying, his abilities declined.

He just isn't a good lead and never will be. Doesn't have the balls for system design

Soyer works best when he is led, not the other way around

Pillows 1 was kind of ballsy, though for Deadfire my guess is there was a lot more input from other people (dangerhairs) he didn't have the guts to dismiss. Maybe he even welcomed that kind of contribution, depending on how many soy lattes he had before.
 

Roguey

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Beaton's mega cringe because she had multiple mental breakdowns because all the dudes who worked on the oil sands were into her (on account of there being virtually no women there of course, it's hard physical labor).
 
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Pillows 1 was kind of ballsy, though for Deadfire my guess is there was a lot more input from other people (dangerhairs) he didn't have the guts to dismiss. Maybe he even welcomed that kind of contribution, depending on how many soy lattes he had before.
Pillars of Eternity suffered from stretch goals. Rather than develop a core basis of its systems, they began fishing for money by selling everyone on niches. In an attempt to make those niches meaningful and distinct, the fundamental systems suffered. They could have started with magic users and non-magic users, then branched out from there. Instead they got overly granular and turned everything into a gimmick that sucked.

The only smart choice that came from all of that was to disconnect skills from classes.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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Pillars of Eternity suffered from stretch goals. Rather than develop a core basis of its systems, they began fishing for money by selling everyone on niches.

Hopefully someone understands, expressed im one simple sentence, one of the major problems of modern RPGs.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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In an attempt to make those niches meaningful and distinct, the fundamental systems suffered.

I doubt there was an effort to make them meaningful and distinct. The effort was only in making them in basic form. These are shallow systems.

Pillars is not the only culprit, but also Owlcat games.
 

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
In an attempt to make those niches meaningful and distinct, the fundamental systems suffered.

I doubt there was an effort to make them meaningful and distinct. The effort was only in making them in basic form. These are shallow systems.

Pillars is not the only culprit, but also Owlcat games.
Yeah I think this a big factor. They try to stuff everything in and a lot of it ends up poorly integrated - often, you can see that it might have been better if they'd spent more time on it, but they seldom do and are always rushed.

It's a painful thing to contemplate for me, because I want all the things in my computer games. But we're always bumping up against limitations of budget, manpower, enthusiasm, ROI for suits, etc.
 

Oberon

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Beaton's mega cringe because she had multiple mental breakdowns because all the dudes who worked on the oil sands were into her (on account of there being virtually no women there of course, it's hard physical labor).
Nah, the unions make sure that no hard physical labor takes place, and there are plenty of women working there as hiring is based entirely on who you know and getting the wife a job there means two six figure incomes in the household.
 
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Yeah I think this a big factor. They try to stuff everything in and a lot of it ends up poorly integrated - often, you can see that it might have been better if they'd spent more time on it, but they seldom do and are always rushed.

It's a painful thing to contemplate for me, because I want all the things in my computer games. But we're always bumping up against limitations of budget, manpower, enthusiasm, ROI for suits, etc.

It's not so much that he tried to have everything. It's that Sawyer was cutting up the cake before it was even baked. That's a recipe for disaster. You get the wizard and spells right before you get the specialist correct. You get your basic fighter correct before you start creating barbarians and monks. He oversold something that didn't exist, and he fell on his face. Not merely that, but he made the general gaming public think that this kind of game was a relic, and not worth reviving. PoE was the standard bearer for the next wave of IE-like games, and it died at birth.
 

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