Development Info Josh Sawyer on the Road to Better Armor Systems

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I don't think armor is the complicated issue. It's other mechanics that are the root, but get conflated with armor. Dodging is the problem. It should not be a free action. AP/reaction should be required. Exceptionally fast attacks like bullets or lighting shouldn't be dodged without a special feat/talent. Critical hits are also another problem. In general, I think the concept should be thrown out or reserved for unique actions, like a Coup de Grace against a helpless opponent.

I would like crits happening at a steady rate determined by your attack vs. their defense, with no random component, but no one else seems excited for this but me. Maybe it's a stupid idea but I like it. I heard arguments that it's too easy to game such a system, when randomness can be gamed even harder.

Sawyer tried to do something like that with critical hits for PoE. If 1d100 + (Attack - Targeted Defense) > 100, the attack is a critical hit. So Drizz't is going to critically hit a tavern rat with nearly every swing. The converse is true for misses. It was not a bad design in itself. I think it's a solid approach. The problem was how it influenced the rest of the system into a granular and dissatisfying soup of "meh". Everything was bell curved into boring.

 

[motherfucker]

DT/DR is sure nice, but how about DT/DT? Rimworld's CE mod has a system like this, basically there's sharp pen and blunt pen, and corresponding resistances for armor. Sharp pen gets checked first(a simple subtraction), and what is resisted is then converted into blunt pen and added to a blunt pen check. So partial penetration is possible, damage without penetration is possible(aforementioned fatigue from Van Buren), it's not even tied to damage. I wish a proper game tried a system like this.

It was not a bad design in itself. I think it's a solid approach.

Misses and crits becoming pretty much guaranteed was complete arse because at some point in the game you'd end up autoattacking with 100% crits, or maybe it's just the trash encounters that made me feel this way. Hit/graze aspect, however, was a great way to develop dodge, it wasn't a 50/50 coiflip anymore.

 

[Desiderius]

The problem (the hole) IIRC was that:

0 <= (Penetration - Armor)/Armor <= 0.3 all did the same damage.

So Mr. Progressive took out all the reward for actually progressing unless you Crit, which doubles Penetration.

Many such cases. Levelers except rich get richer.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

People still take Soyer the balance man seriously in 2022? Huh, but then again, the man's a true innovator.
He even prostrated before trannies on twitter before it was a mainstream thing to do.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

It was not a bad design in itself. I think it's a solid approach.

Misses and crits becoming pretty much guaranteed was complete arse because at some point in the game you'd end up autoattacking with 100% crits, or maybe it's just the trash encounters that made me feel this way. Hit/graze aspect, however, was a great way to develop dodge, it wasn't a 50/50 coiflip anymore.

That's something of an intended result and debatably desirable result for the system. It simulates the vast disparity in fighting ability between two unevenly matched foes without totally eliminating that "je ne sais quoi" of random dice. What it did do, like Pathfinder somewhat does, is strongly incentivize fishing for critical hits--sometimes above all else. That's something I definitely take issue with.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

He has a point, if only he didn't make Pillars 1 and 2 so boring, and worst of all something like Pallegina his " favorite" I would even almost agree with him.

 

[Desiderius]

This is probably his shittiest talk ever.

High bar

Less talk, more action.

 

[Latro]

joshua sawyer must be killed

you might not like this, but it has to be done

a midwit retard of these proportions who keeps perpetually failing upwards is life is simply not something that can be tolerated any further

brave codexer: sawyer can't write, his ideas for systems are retarded, PoE sucks, why do you keep him around
feargus: maybe, but he gave us new vegas
brave codexer: and he has done nothing else
feargus: but he gave us new vegas. end of rine. time for cheesecake factory.

 

[gaussgunner]

It's all so tiresome.

Indeed, I slept through most of it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Isn't that, you know, the entire fucking point? How DOES body armor protect you against a gun meant to shoot holes through a car engine block or a fucking nuke? The answer: IT DOESN'T. Ever player should quite reasonably intuitively understand that a weapon that is meant to destroy vehicles or even entire buildings is GOING TO FUCK YOU UP.

You overestimate the demographic ability to know certain stuff who play these games. New York liberal will assume that a big ass gun like bozar or minigun will be much better than the anti materiel rifle. If you don't know shit about caliber, velocity, armor penetration, plainly, you don't know shit about guns, you will regress to infant reasoning meaning "bigger = better". So the game has to signal to that demographic certain stuff in order for them to connect the dots.

It's a videogame, there is no reason for me to intuitively assume any of that applies until I see it in action.

 

[motherfucker]

worst of all something like Pallegina his " favorite"

The birb is best girl, fite me

 

[Kruno]

Josh Sawyer is a prodigy in RPG mechanics!

 

[Tihskael]

People still take Soyer the balance man seriously in 2022? Huh, but then again, the man's a true innovator.
He even prostrated before trannies on twitter before it was a mainstream thing to do.

Someone explain this joke.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Someone explain this joke.

That's the replacement, this was the original:

Here lies Fireborn, a hero in bed.

He once was alive, but now he’s dead.

The last woman he bedded, turned out a man.

And crying in shame, off a cliff he ran.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Josh always seems like a guru when he talks about RPG design, but last time he tried to put his design theories into practice, he ended up making an RPG with 5 hour tutorial island and 20 minute main quest.

 

[Roguey]

20 minute main quest.

I'm fully in favor of this tbh. The number of steps you have to take to complete Fallout is good, the number of steps you have to take to complete Arcanum is a drag.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

20 minute main quest.

I'm fully in favor of this tbh. The number of steps you have to take to complete Fallout is good, the number of steps you have to take to complete Arcanum is a drag.

Sure, but I'd argue with Fallout it's different because the entire scope is limited. That's part of the appeal of the F1, it's this tight and self-contained story.

But when you're making a bigass epic 120 hour RPG and Zoom calls with the god council end up taking more time than the main quest, that's a big oof.

 

[Roguey]

Sure, but I'd argue with Fallout it's different because the entire scope is limited. That's part of the appeal of the F1, it's this tight and self-contained story.

But when you're making a bigass epic 120 hour RPG and Zoom calls with the god council end up taking more time than the main quest, that's a big oof.

Nothing epic about Deadfire, they tell you to find the big statue walking around, and you do. That's the plot.

 

[yes plz]

The idea behind the main quest is fairly epic -- you've been resurrected by the gods to chase around another god who wants to destroy the current process of how souls are processed and reincarnated, which will affect the entirety of the world for generations to come -- but the actual execution of the quest chain was a limp noodle without any grandiosity to it.

 

[Alienman]

Chasing down a reawaken god that tramples down whole villages all over doesn't sound that low key to me.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Honestly everything about the setting of Eora is cool as fuck, down to the Dutch VOC equivalent, 16th century wars of religion and nobles, byzantine politics. My main issue is not what Josh had in mind for Eora and the story or Gods. Its just how shit is presented which is a fucking failure. Some bad and clearly rushed aesthetic decisions, although it retains some little mystery the setting goes out of its way to try to spit the lore out, and pillars 2 ruins the gods even more. Its like a setting made with love by one guy in which then other people playing it are critical role faggots and act as modern people if that makes sense. The way the ezquimo ranger girl talked for example, in another time there would have been an attempt to make her sound more tribal, not necessarily UNGA BUNGA primitive but different. She just sounds like a modern person. But yeah fuck pallegina.

What really hurts is the disappointment.

 

[Alex]

Does "Damage Reduction" as Fallout uses the term even make any sense from the fictional standpoint? I mean, let's assume what is possibly the simplest case of damage; that done by firearms. There is a really good article for GURPS that tries to capture the idea of what the abstract idea of damage means in this case here. Also, not only is this case simpler to consider, it actually represents a good portion of the attacks that will happen in game.

Anyway, the article holds that damage is proportional to the volume displaced by the bullet. That is, the more the bullet penetrates and the greater its cross-section area (which is squarely proportional to its calibre), the more damage it causes. Two bullets of similar calibre, construction and material will penetrate more or less the material according to the initial speed of the bullet. If a certain bullet fired at 850m/s penetrates 5mm of a material, then firing it at 1700m/s should roughly allow it to penetrate 10mm of the same material, and it should have roughly double the damage of the previous attack.

Now, if we hold this abstraction to hold, the issue here is that if there is such a thing as damage reduction like there is in Fallout, then the (approximated) linearity between speed and penetration wouldn't hold. If 5mm of a certain armour managed to absorb 10% of the energy of an attack on top of reducing the speed of the bullet to 0, then a bullet with twice the speed wouldn't penetrate twice the thickness of the armour, but rather approximately 9.5mm. And three times would penetrate approximately 13.6, and successively less and less because for every 5mm of thickness, the attack gets a damage reduction of (1 - (0.9)^n).

Of course, this kind of thing could be explained with some kind of "super science", but then it should be reserved for the more advanced armours, not something you could get from a leather jacked.

 

[Norfleet]

Of course, then you get the case where the amount of material penetrated is greater than the amount which exists, so now you have an overpen and all the extra unused damage exits out the back of the target.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Of course, then you get the case where the amount of material penetrated is greater than the amount which exists, so now you have an overpen and all the extra unused damage exits out the back of the target.

Hehe

 

[ROARRR]

Why not have damage resistance over 100% percent.
Incoming damage heals fighter.
Why?
Beacuse warrior so strong when hit by fist or weapon it will be like massage that rejuvinates.
Warrior can only made ouch by magic and emotions.
So person with high charisma can hurt feelings until person faints due to unberable words.
And don´t say this stupid, because bard can also hurt with words!