Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

[Infinitron]

The design philosophy of either making a skill important to the game-play or removing it all together is nothing but gamism.

Sorry, man. Sawyer gonna Sawyer.

 

[Brother None]

There shouldn't be any bad choices.

That's horrid.

Let me get this straight, the Codex, a place that will defend the need for you to be able to fail at any game if you're an idiot throughout, somehow is fine with making an exception of this for character creation, making character creation a "no-fail" gameplay element, because...What makes character creation different? For Frith's sake, isn't Eternity going to offer a respec? It certainly seems to fit that genre. That makes this even less relevant. I actually like having to dive into and learn a game to be able to properly construct my character. Pen and Paper games don't expect you to get it perfectly right on the first go. But nah, gotta handhold the player. Every possible character build has to be exactly as useful. What's next, players are obligated to take a combat skill because Sawyer feels it's necessary? How much hand-holding do I want?

Why? Why does the reasoning you guys would defend to internet death on overall gameplay balance and challenge, choice & meaningful consequences, the ability to fail and die, why does that suddenly not apply to character creation?

Transplant all this logic to a Bethesda/BioWare design blog. And be honest with yourself. Would you still be defending it?

I'd rather design some mechanical way of making it impossible to overinvest in stuff in character building rather than trying to make every option equally good and useful top-down

It does seem a little ass-backwards. There are plenty of ways to discuss and inform the player on the usefulness of skills, for one. It seems to be an information problem, game throwing you curve-balls, and that has ways around it. That's conflating several issues anyway, namely of bad game design in a game that doesn't keep a consistent approach to combat/dialog/quest design throughout (like Lionheart). That has very little to do with the character system and very much with just being a bad game.

Even more so, there are a ton of mechanical solutions here. Limited respec like Fallout's "Mutate!" or "Tag!" perks. Skill weights to give different levels of investments different increments depending on the skills use. Skill pool splits. Skill/perk splits for usage.

I'm not exactly talking about keeping in skills from a transplanted system that have no use, as some classic RPGs did. But there's a huge gap between making sure all skills are relevant to some degree and just cutting out all skills that do not see highly frequent use. Look at all those options listed above. There are so many choices and ways to fix things, but the option Sawyer went with is "just remove skills that aren't useful", the most simplified, limiting option of them all, and you guys are FINE with that?!

The design philosophy of either making a skill important to the game-play or removing it all together is nothing but gamism.

Sorry, man. Sawyer gonna Sawyer.

I wish it was gamism. But I saw what Sawyer did to SPECIAL in Van Buren and New Vegas and that's a big part of the reason I had less interest in Eternity than others, and it's just confirmed here. Toxic has it dead to rights, it's not gamism, gamism would show an intelligent application of the wide swath of complicated options computer gaming makes possible (compared to p&p gaming). Gamism would be a surgeon going at it with a scalpel, but Sawyer is a surgeon with a sledgehammer. It *is* streamlining, pure and simple.

 

[Infinitron]

I wish it was gamism. But I saw what Sawyer did to SPECIAL in Van Buren and New Vegas and that's a big part of the reason I had less interest in Eternity than others, and it's just confirmed here. Toxic has it dead to rights, it's not gamism, gamism would show an intelligent application of the wide swath of complicated options computer gaming makes possible (compared to p&p gaming). Gamism would be a surgeon going at it with a scalpel, but Sawyer is a surgeon with a sledgehammer. It *is* streamlining, pure and simple.

No doubt, it is streamlining...in the service of gamism. The intention is not to simulate a "reality" in which there are useless skills, but to create a game with a myriad of tactically interesting and useful choices.

 

[Hormalakh]

I just hope Tim Cain slaps him back to reality. Slap him Tim. Slap him.

 

[Brother None]

No doubt, it is streamlining...in the service of gamism. The intention is not to simulate a reality in which there are "useless skills", but to create a game with a myriad of tactically interesting and useful choices.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. No one is arguing *for* a simulation of a reality with useless skills. What is being argued is that that the method of offering interesting and useful choices can vary in many ways. You can make the system more complex, create methods by which not every skill is born or weighted equal, be more careful about balance, and force yourself to find creative ways out of difficult situations for the player, and also accept that not every character build can deal with every major situation, which is perfectly fine. Or you can just cut out a bunch of skills and make an overly simplistic character system.

Guess which one I prefer? Guess which one you're defending?

I realize Project Eternity is a dungeon crawler so it will no doubt push me to make a combat-viable build, so maybe for a simpler game like Eternity it's fine. As a design principle in general though? Yegh. Seeing it applied to Fallout? Yyyyyyegh.

 

[Infinitron]

You're presenting a false dichotomy. No one is arguing *for* a simulation of a reality with useless skills.

Some skills should be completely useless most of the time or the game-world loses its edge. The design philosophy of either making a skill important to the game-play or removing it all together is nothing but lazy streamlining. Take some inspiration from reality u guise, some skills just aren't worth their weight in catshit but they're still skills.

 

[Gozma]

Also I gotta say there is not a single one-player turnbased computer game I can remember that is still fun to me after I learn all the shit in it. The learning is the point. Getting kicked in the balls with complete metagame bullshit, like it turning out the game has no axes in it after you are allowed to put all your points in axes or whatever, is one thing - but a game that is so transparent there's nothing to figure out or determine through play in a pseudo-TB context where there are no somatic skills to polish up will also probably suck. Seems like an art rather than something like a chemical purification

 

[Infinitron]

Guess which one I prefer? Guess which one you're defending?

I'm not defending anything. I've acknowledged in the past that Sawyer's philosophy could lead to a game that goes down too smoothly and easily. What I'm doing here is correcting the overreactions of Codexers who react to buzzwords in an irrational manner. If you want defense see Roguey.

 

[Infinitron]

What is being argued is that that the method of offering interesting and useful choices can vary in many ways. You can make the system more complex, create methods by which not every skill is born or weighted equal, be more careful about balance, and force yourself to find creative ways out of difficult situations for the player, and also accept that not every character build can deal with every major situation, which is perfectly fine. Or you can just cut out a bunch of skills and make an overly simplistic character system.

I don't know what you're talking about here. As far as I can tell, Project Eternity will be closer to the former description than the latter. Who ever said anything about "cutting out skills"? The point is to make skills useful, not cut them out.

 

[Moribund]

A lot of the examples being given are also strawmen. No game designer ever puts in a skill and makes absolutely NO use out of it. These skills have variable uses. Even the medicine/doctor skill. They have limited uses, yes, but they still can be used. They might not be used throughout the game, but there will be a time that if you have that skill you do use it. It might not be very effective, but there is still a discernible effect that skill makes in the game. Min-maxers won't use it, but LARPers will.

So, no strawmen please. The whole BG1 katana thing is a strawman. The actual devs who made the game didn't put in katanas as skill precisely because there were no katanas.

They even said "there won't be many katanas!". How much more hand holding do you need?

Worse than that is he really, truly seems to think rogues are useless in combat and he's making a knockoff DnD game system. Stick a fork in it, with one sentence he proved himself completely clueless. This is gonna be complete crap.

 

[Hormalakh]

I don't think he's clueless. He's obviously a good gamer and has experience (both playing,DMing, and making) in a lot of games. I just think that he makes games for other people and not for himself. I wonder if he thinks most gamers are below his level of gaming (and are retards) and just can't handle the RAW SAWYER.

 

[Moribund]

If he thinks that thief is totally utility character he's not so much clueless as braindead.

Most powerful character in PnP is thief in the hands of someone smart. Most brutal fighter is thief or fighter thief in crpgs. I mean BG had to CHEAT LIKE CRAZY to damp down your ability to solo with a thief. You could easily take out every battle with just thief if they didn't, it's that strong (when you use it right). You still can if you pick up some anti magic scrolls to eliminated the cheating. Speed run on thief equals whee.

Mages are just dogmeat to a thief and even the most unstoppable fighter can get taken down, which you'd otherwise waste your whole party grinding down.

It's just an example. You know very well that there are things in RPGs where in retrospect everybody says "lol that was useless shit". Even if it wasn't literally 100% useless.

Well. that is not exactly a gray area, right? I mean look at it this way: In F:NV IT IS RETARDED to invest in Chr because it does not affect any dialogue option where there is speech skill involved. Granted there are Feats and Special Dialogues that NECESSARILY Chr based. But they are so few and have so little impact on the gameplay compared to other skills that it becomes moot.

The real criticism here is that the redundancy and less than fluff use of the potential CHR. Of course the few instances it is used is not sufficient to justify its existence since those few instances do not justify the punishment of investing in it. That is balance.

High CHA in FoNV makes the already tough companions almnost immortals (the higher the stat, the higher their nerve i.e damage output and damage resistance), which is exactly what a diplomat character would want since, having his other stats lower, he'd be suckier in combat. That is balance

Spoiler

It's ok Roguey, you don't have to thank me

What you and sawyer both seem to fail at is realizing blance doesn't mean doing all the same things in the same way, that's really crap balance. Not everyone has to be a good fighter. It would be better if the charisma just helped you avoid the toughest encounters.

Having it act like a combat buff is just lol ridiculous typical shit cheap trick I'd expected in DA or Fable. Why be a mage when your fighter has area attack fireballS? Everyone is just the same! Which is not equality, it's just bad design.

 

[Infinitron]

The thing about Sawyer is that it's hard to estimate from his choice of language just how far he intends to go with his philosophy. What does it really mean to make every single choice in character development "useful"? What does "useful" mean?

It could be anything from Blizzard-style BALANCE UBER ALLES to basically "Fallout without Gambling and Outdoorsman".

 

[Anac'raxus]

I do think skills/abilities/what-have-you should be supported in gameplay, or streamlined out of the game. Maybe give players who want to LARP a Master Basket Weaver some trashcans flavor pools they can dump picks into, and let the player name the trashcans options.

I think, however, it should be possible to make a bad character build, but not because one wastes picks by picking unsupported-in-game options, but because one isn't paying attention to synergies across options. I think there should be a strategic layer to character building which players can lose (ie,what used to go under the pejorative of power-gaming in the old days).

 

[Infinitron]

I agree with Shrek. The "learning is the point" attitude == having low expectations for games as a medium and the challenges they can provide

 

[Gozma]

When AI can turn the metagame into a moving target, gimme a call. Like I said, I have never played a one-player TB game that was fun after I learned it, yet I and everyone here has played and enjoyed some of them. I'm waiting for real AI in a single player game like I'm waiting for teleportation. I won't yell at a cabbie for traversing between points

 

[Moribund]

But if it's geared to MP then it will be more diablo crap, not fun in single player at all.

 

[Anac'raxus]

If he thinks that thief is totally utility character he's not so much clueless as braindead.

Most powerful character in PnP is thief in the hands of someone smart. Most brutal fighter is thief or fighter thief in crpgs. I mean BG had to CHEAT LIKE CRAZY to damp down your ability to solo with a thief. You could easily take out every battle with just thief if they didn't, it's that strong (when you use it right). You still can if you pick up some anti magic scrolls to eliminated the cheating. Speed run on thief equals whee.

Wasn't that only because of engine exploits and no-so-strict rules interpretations, though? I mean, you really shouldn't be able to treat hide in shadows as full invisibility.

 

[Moribund]

Why? Why does the reasoning you guys would defend to internet death on overall gameplay balance and challenge, choice & meaningful consequences, the ability to fail and die, why does that suddenly not apply to character creation?

There's not many people defending that these days, except the c&c. Most of them don't seem to like RPGs at all and wish they could skip that boring combat crap.

 

[Alex]

I do agree with Sawyer in the first part of his reasoning. Different skills should all have some use. More than that, I would go so far as to say that different skills should have different kinds of challenge associated to them. Like, if you want to be a diplomat, the game could challenge you through requiring you to see things through other people's eyes, and figure out what they want. Whereas a thief could be challenged by brining the right tools for a job, finding the best ways to use his skills and dealing with the unforeseen.

That said, I think it is also ok to games like RoA, MegaTraveller and what not to have really useless skills, if their approach is supposed to be modular. A little like Never Winter Nights. If players want to take their ranger who is specialized in killing aerial enemies to Underdark, that is his choice. Though I think there is something to be said about systems where character building occurs with more general skills , and specializations are less defining aspects. Like wizards in old D&D, who specialize through their spells (which can be readily changed), but whose level translate into a general competency of magic. Of course, systems wouldn't need to be that simplified.

On the second part, I disagree with him most certainly. Rogues in D&D were bad in combat because they weren't supposed to be in combat in first place. Although many CRPGs have combat as the be all end all activity of RPGs, that is not true in P&P games. In fact, one of my favorite retroclones, Lamentation of the Flame Princess, has fighters as the only class that get combat bonuses as they level. No other class improves its THAC0. That seemed extreme to a lot f people, but if you take combat as simply a tool to be used to explore dungeons/wilderness/whatever, then it makes sense. A very useful tool, to be sure, but also one that can put you in danger most quickly.

Now, Shadenuat made a very good point that IE games, or at least BG and IWD, were mostly about combat. I think the affirmative isn't so true about BG, though the non combat aspect of that game had little to do with your stats and attributes. But I think a few of the pledgers were hoping for a little improvement in this aspect. While a double pool system makes perfect sense to a game like IWD, where pre-combat content can be seem like a prelude to the combat itself (maybe changing it in some key ways, but not avoiding it or changing it entirely).

But I think that, if non combat skills could have enough of an effect in combat so a previously impossible battle now is trivial, it still would be very Baldur's Gate like, if not all that IWD like (though IWD 2 did that sometimes). In that case, I think it would make sense to have a single pool, even if combat still is a bit more important than peripheral skills.

(...snip)
Not out of the blue. The player should be given hints and, if he's paying enough attention to what is happening around him in the game world, he should be able to know, or, at least, predict the consequences of his choices. However, if he proceeds with eyes wide shut, then he deserves to suffer. Also, consequences shouldn't be always immediate. A significant amount of all consequences of your actions should happen quite a while after you made the choices (like the long term C&C in The Witcher 1).
(snip...)

I think this is somewhat similar to his approach of wanting to use skill tags in dialog, adding the possibility of removing them through options, but probably not caring much if the dialog choice makes it clear through context and phrasing what it is about. It is not about whether I want to hit my face against the way several times. It is about whether the game gives me the tools I need to make a good choice without rubbing them on my face. If I want to know whether the ice storm spell is any good in Undershadow, I should be able to talk to NPCs, read books or maybe even use a few character skills to find what I need to make my own mind. Instead of having it alwas be somewhat useful, or having it plainly spelled in the loading screen "Undershadow's proximity to the plane of eternal flames makes casting ice spells there a bad idea".

 

[Delterius]

But nah, gotta handhold the player. Every possible character build has to be exactly as useful.

Are you sure that's what he meant? From what I gathered, Sawyer meant that all skills should all be useful throught the entire game - that doesn't mean the game's already finished from the get-go (as in, every 'encounter' being solved by every skill).

If across a game of 50 'encounters', say, around 8 can be 'solved' with varying masteries of 'diplomacy', then the investment is certainly worthwhile - meanwhile there are still around 42 encounters to test my party composition, when its always good to remember that a character build is useful within the context of the entire party.

And that's assuming 'solving encounters' is the only thing Sawyer consider adequate response to your choice. Not the best example, but Survival from Storm of Zehir (didn't play much, but I do remember it vaguely) was always nearly 'useful', but not game-solving, changing or even life-saving.

 

[Moribund]

If he thinks that thief is totally utility character he's not so much clueless as braindead.

Most powerful character in PnP is thief in the hands of someone smart. Most brutal fighter is thief or fighter thief in crpgs. I mean BG had to CHEAT LIKE CRAZY to damp down your ability to solo with a thief. You could easily take out every battle with just thief if they didn't, it's that strong (when you use it right). You still can if you pick up some anti magic scrolls to eliminated the cheating. Speed run on thief equals whee.

Wasn't that only because of engine exploits and no-so-strict rules interpretations, though? I mean, you really shouldn't be able to treat hide in shadows as full invisibility.

You should be able to sneak about anywhere with high level thief. In fact you should be able to solo a campaign if you are a thief with invisibility ring or lots of potions. Thief is just very powerful. The backstab mechanic was crap in BG but I don't know what else you can do in a rtwp game.

But the backstab stuff is very powerful. Grinding out lots of easy enemies doesn't win battles, winning battles is when you skillfully manage to lure out the archlich and backstab him before he can turn the tide on you.

It's obvious that sawyer never figured this out. The most powerful character is useless? Oops, looks like we need a new designer then. I almost hope it's excuse making for his sake, and he doesn't believe this.

 

[Infinitron]

FYI, I commented on Josh's Formspring post.

 

[CappenVarra]

On the second part, I disagree with him most certainly. Rogues in D&D were bad in combat because they weren't supposed to be in combat in first place. Although many CRPGs have combat as the be all end all activity of RPGs, that is not true in P&P games. In fact, one of my favorite retroclones, Lamentation of the Flame Princess, has fighters as the only class that get combat bonuses as they level. No other class improves its THAC0. That seemed extreme to a lot f people, but if you take combat as simply a tool to be used to explore dungeons/wilderness/whatever, then it makes sense. A very useful tool, to be sure, but also one that can put you in danger most quickly.

Now imagine that instead of making sure every class/character is capable of dealing at least X points of damage per round (which P:E won't have, rounds that is) and has at least 5 but no more that 15 options to choose from at all times (as mandated by his royal highness the game designer), they went with the OD&D "XP for treasure" mechanic, and made sure it plays right (a high target, but we're not paying them to do easy things). Poof, all of a sudden non-combat skills are as viable as combat ones without any "balancing", there is no need for discrete "quests" to advance characters, and no poor skills need to be segregated in pools (isn't that against the Geneva convention or something?). And Sawyer could be satisfied that he managed to capture a long-term tradition of actual players (looting everything that isn't nailed down) and turn it into a mechanic... Which would be much better than "some players have problems playing rogues so we'll fix it by making rogues lightly armored dual-wielding fighters", so of course it won't happen - but it's nice to imagine

 

[evdk]

FYI, I commented on Josh's Formspring post.

Self promotion has its limits, you know