Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Working out the kinks in your own system can be difficult, because you generally regard it as a whole. You know the big picture--the intent. A person who finds the system, like a layman picking up an unfamiliar tool on a jobsite, will imagine many other purposes for it. In attempting to figure it out, they'll pull at the threads rather than regard the whole cloth. I've spent years developing a homebrew RPG. I've had about 7 iterations. After returning to it after stopping because of life or because I got bored, I invariably find an insurmountable problem/inconsistency or two that will cause me to significantly rework it. You don't typically get that luxury on a project with deadlines.

Trying that is a good way to be deadfired. *cue laugh track*

 

[Gordian Nutt]

Working out the kinks in your own system can be difficult, because you generally regard it as a whole. You know the big picture--the intent. A person who finds the system, like a layman picking up an unfamiliar tool on a jobsite, will imagine many other purposes for it. In attempting to figure it out, they'll pull at the threads rather than regard the whole cloth. I've spent years developing a homebrew RPG. I've had about 7 iterations. After returning to it after stopping because of life or because I got bored, I invariably find an insurmountable problem/inconsistency or two that will cause me to significantly rework it. You don't typically get that luxury on a project with deadlines.

Trying that is a good way to be deadfired. *cue laugh track*

Designers too in love with their own systems can have this happen

I am not saying do not design your own system but if you cannot balance it then do not try to do everything

Deadlines are part of normal game development and are not an excuse for bad system design

 

[Major_Blackhart]

My gripe is Sawyer is obsessed with balance so that each class works in all situations.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I agree with both of you. Sawyer bit off more than he could chew but only doubled down. I wonder what kind of echo chamber Obsidian must have had at the time, because there should have been a several people on the team second guessing and dissenting what he was doing. The ideas started on the right path, like, using a D100. Basing action economy around explicit time rather than abstract action points. Even not having any hard-counters could have been really good. They just got really lost in overly granular, gimmicky, and try-hard classes. Weak, unimaginative, magic. A deluge of minutiae status effects. Gimmicky talents (feats). Over-emphasis on interruption & engagement. The list goes on.

The bland not D&D setting and lost plot could have been tolerated were the class/spell/abilities not so awful. The insistence that nothing "suck" brought everything down to a low common denominator where no joy was to be had. I guess that was just his inner commie expressing itself. At launch, his special snowflake Cipher class was actually decently fun, but that's because it was actually comparatively good. He made sure to reign that in later. I had a feeling that during the kickstarter when they were using classes as stretch goal bait that it would really bite them. I think that's ultimately what did him in. Trying to create a dozen distinctive classes for a new (then theoretical) system while not simply plagiarizing prior art is too much. A good starting point for a new system like that would have been sorting out how magic wielders and non-magic wielders each do something, then growing from there.

Feelings Towards PoE:
Like a child unwrapping a box of clothing on Christmas morning.

 

[Gordian Nutt]

I do not think it was an echo chamber it was just Saywer

Tim Cain is listed as additional system designer on Pillars but I doubt his ideas were used because Saywer revised the stronghold and changed it to something poor and then blew it up in POE2

Saywer as Project Director was also as sole system designer = this means his systems are used without much argument + he was lead designer too, he was doing too much and did not sound like he delegated anything

Same was true of his roles on New Vegas - no other system designer, just Saywer, playing with himself

 

[Butter]

The difference is that Sawyer actually wanted to make a Fallout game. I don't think he had any passion to make more D&D games, and he even says in this GDC talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyrEhAMUPo&t=2787s) that he'd rather make a classless game. It explains why he took to the idea of "no bad builds". It makes sense in a classless game that every attribute has to be potentially desirable for every character, but obviously not in a class-based game. If Sawyer hadn't been constrained by the promise of an IE successor, Pillars of Eternity would've looked a lot different, and probably a lot better, but then it wouldn't have buoyed up the struggling company.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[kreight]

this girl sounds like a broken claptrap

 

[Gordian Nutt]

The difference is that Sawyer actually wanted to make a Fallout game. I don't think he had any passion to make more D&D games, and he even says in this GDC talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyrEhAMUPo&t=2787s) that he'd rather make a classless game. It explains why he took to the idea of "no bad builds". It makes sense in a classless game that every attribute has to be potentially desirable for every character, but obviously not in a class-based game. If Sawyer hadn't been constrained by the promise of an IE successor, Pillars of Eternity would've looked a lot different, and probably a lot better, but then it wouldn't have buoyed up the struggling company.

No blame for Sawyer - it was all he did not do that would have made it great!

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Such a cheap copout. "Probably forgot, but it's actually better this way."

 

[Roguey]

It's in character for Eder to forget though.

 

[Quillon]

I didn't remember Woden there either

 

[Nano]

I get the feeling that Paul's coworkers often get the urge to punch him in the face.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

I'll take Kirsch over Dollarhyde/Sailor Woedica any day of the week.

The fact I am blissfully unaware of his politics on anything is also a bonus since he doesn't broadcast it loudly and shrilly enough while dying his hair. I am sure any fellow Codexian will quickly prove me wrong.

I haven't read his short stories, though, so not sure if they suck or not. I'd like to hope. I thought the DLCs were pretty good, though, I forgot what he did on Tyranny.

 

[vortex]

Who is the best Obsidian writer currently? How do you even rate writing, by which standards ?

 

[Efe]

Some people attempt writing but no, they arent writers.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

Who is the best Obsidian writer currently? How do you even rate writing, by which standards ?

It's probably the quietest ones, like the Outer Worlds writer guy who never gets mentioned.

The loudest ones with extended inflated Twitter bios pretty much all suck. Well, except Starks maybe (?).

Can't wait to see what the new Farcry auteur does with Unwowed, bet that'll be a gorgeous pile of generic fantasy crap.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[purupuru]

it's a harder system to understand than DT in Pillars 1, so many players simply don't engage with the system and get frustrated.

I hope he is not putting the blames on the players here, because that would be irresponsible. Armor/Pen is not hard to understand at all, it just requires competent and deliberate encounter design to go with it in order for the player to interact with the system in any meaningful way. For example, if you have an enemy with extremely high damage output yet reasonably low pen of a single type, then players will learn to raise armor value to get that 70% damage reduction, or if the enemy's attack with highest pen deals no direct damage but applies DOT, then maybe it's a good idea to use lighter armor and kill it fast. But if you just throw a bunch of generic mobs at the player with an even assortment of damage types and strengths then there really isn't much the players can do to interact with the system and optimize.

 

[Butter]

Deadfire's Pen system is really fucking bad, and Sawyer should feel bad for having put it in his game. Instead of having something that makes sense like "increase your damage to deal more damage", you have this pointless abstraction called penetration that's completely independent of damage and has way more impact on your total damage dealt. It ruins the item progression because once you have something with high pen, you don't want to trade it out for anything unless the new item also has high pen.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

someone needs to go to sawyer's house and block SA on his router

 

[Major_Blackhart]

No hope for Obsidian.

 

[kreight]

Was he... talking to himself there? Also two discussions dedicated to this douche? One is too much.

 

[Bad Sector]

I hope he is not putting the blames on the players here, because that would be irresponsible.

Deadfire's Pen system is really fucking bad, and Sawyer should feel bad for having put it in his game.

That comma was in a weird place but the "A system that "works better" but that players can't engage with does not, in practice "work better"." reply makes it sound like he does think it doesn't actually work even though he initially thought it'd be better.

(note that i haven't played any PoE so i don't know what all that stuff refers to :-P)

 

[Efe]

its his fault ever thinking that armor/pen design is anything but failure