Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Major_Blackhart]

Failing upwards. It's sometimes too weird to be true but that's Obsidian in a nutshell.

 

[copebot]

That's really bad for California software dev. There are literally FAANG interns that make more money with far less responsibility. Remember the state government rapes a lot of additional $ -- his bracket would make it so he pays around 10% in state income tax on top of all the other taxes.

I stand with Josh's call for unionization because it will destroy the California gaming industry faster.

 

[santino27]

I worked in software engineering (non-gaming) for 20+ years in SoCal and most of my peers were (as staff/principal engineers) in the 110-140k range, whereas some of our interns went up to San Francisco to starting salaries of 100k. There's such a HUGE difference between the bay area and So Cal, in both salary and cost of living, that you can't really lump all of CA together.

Also, he's not really a software developer. He's a glorified project manager with some basic writing/scripting responsibilities.

 

[Roguey]

Why did Josh get a 35k raise last year? It apparently didn't come with a title change, and he hasn't shipped anything since 2018. Obsidian QAs probably make less than 35k/year.

"Almost all of my big raises were the result of me directly asking to be paid more outside of the normal review cycle."

That's really bad for California software dev. There are literally FAANG interns that make more money with far less responsibility. Remember the state government rapes a lot of additional $ -- his bracket would make it so he pays around 10% in state income tax on top of all the other taxes.

I stand with Josh's call for unionization because it will destroy the California gaming industry faster.

The pay is better elsewhere, yes, but the perk is that you get to work on RPGs. Boyarsky left his likely-better-paying-and-more-stable Blizzard job for Obsidian.

 

[AwesomeButton]

He only gets that much because Feargus likes him.

The irony of this is just overwhelming

 

[Riddler]

Why did Josh get a 35k raise last year? It apparently didn't come with a title change, and he hasn't shipped anything since 2018. Obsidian QAs probably make less than 35k/year.

"Almost all of my big raises were the result of me directly asking to be paid more outside of the normal review cycle."

That's really bad for California software dev. There are literally FAANG interns that make more money with far less responsibility. Remember the state government rapes a lot of additional $ -- his bracket would make it so he pays around 10% in state income tax on top of all the other taxes.

I stand with Josh's call for unionization because it will destroy the California gaming industry faster.

The pay is better elsewhere, yes, but the perk is that you get to work on RPGs. Boyarsky left his likely-better-paying-and-more-stable Blizzard job for Obsidian.

Blizzard are notorious for underpaying their developers though.

 

[Testownia]

I wouldn't mind a Disco Elysium style game set in Eora where I play as a Cipher. After all, that's their main role in society - basically psychic detectives.

 

[DraQ]

I hate Munchkinism

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO MAKE THE PROGRESSION SMALL NUMBERED AND BORING CAUSE I HAVE A SMALL DICK AND BIG NUMBERS THREATEN MY MASCULINITY
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T HAVE OVERPOWERED BUILDS, I HATE MUNCHKINISM, YOU SHOULD BALANCE YOUR GAMES LIKE SAWYER BALANCED PoE
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I'm gonna post this, but this is retarded even for me.

Some hard truth time:
You know what both and munchkins have in common?

Spoiler

Both masturbate over numbers.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So essentially autism?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Jfc people still bitching about "no OP builds" when the game has stuff like an Arquebus that shoots two bullets with the same damage as 1-bullet gun, has a 100% knockback chance if melee NPC comes near, has a stacking +20% damage buff, and the only downside compared to other guns is that range is smaller by a pixel.

 

[Haplo]

Jfc people still bitching about "no OP builds" when the game has stuff like an Arquebus that shoots two bullets with the same damage as 1-bullet gun, has a 100% knockback chance if melee NPC comes near, has a stacking +20% damage buff, and the only downside compared to other guns is that range is smaller by a pixel.

Or a sabre that upon killing a vessel (undead or golem) - which your chanter can mass summon as meatshields - will conjure a party-friendly Chillfog that will aoe Blind enemies (on every tick - with lasting affliction duration, so even if they pass a save or 2 it doesn't really matter), as well as try to paralyze all enemies in the aoe with every tick. Also tick dealing cold damage - maybe least important unless... the wielder is Confused (such as a frenzied Berserker), because then its no longer party-friendly and can mass-kill those skellies and stack multiple instances of death dealing zones of Cold.
Oh and also the damage from those aoe Chillfog ticks will fuel the Focus, if wielded by a Cipher.

Well, I better stop. There are almost too many weapons to fall in love with in Deadfire.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd say killing friendly/summoned undead triggering the chillfog is an oversight. Like a lot of soulbound weapons that could be upgraded by attacking ranger pets in PoE1.

 

[Haplo]

Maybe an oversight, maybe a feature. High level Paladins also gain Zeal when their allies die, AFAIR.

What's more likely to be an oversight, is that the aoe Chillfog ticks also proc Grave Bound and paralyze enemies.
Or that such effects can stack.
Or that such spell-like abilities still count as weapon attacks, gain bonus accuracy, damage and Pen from weapon quality - and for example, generate Focus for ciphers.


Nonetheless, very

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I'd say killing friendly/summoned undead triggering the chillfog is an oversight. Like a lot of soulbound weapons that could be upgraded by attacking ranger pets in PoE1.

It's just one example out of many anyway. Put vampire cloak and old city shield on Eder and max the required attributes, enjoy having bigger defenses than most of the bosses while still doing shitload of damage through riposte tanking and giving all enemies Distracted, and you don't even have to press a button to do all of it because it's all passive so you can just stand there.

Plenty of builds are out of whack, especially in Deadfire.

 

[Sweeper]

Sawyer doesn't even need the filter anymore, with each passing second he's looking more and more like an old grandmother.
Sometimes I wake up at night, drenched in cold sweat, worrying about that man's sperm count.

Some hard truth time:
You know what both and munchkins have in common?

Spoiler

Both masturbate over numbers.

I forgot I posted that, holy shit I'm retarded.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'd say killing friendly/summoned undead triggering the chillfog is an oversight. Like a lot of soulbound weapons that could be upgraded by attacking ranger pets in PoE1.

It's just one example out of many anyway. Put vampire cloak and old city shield on Eder and max the required attributes, enjoy having bigger defenses than most of the bosses while still doing shitload of damage through riposte tanking and giving all enemies Distracted, and you don't even have to press a button to do all of it because it's all passive so you can just stand there.

Plenty of builds are out of whack, especially in Deadfire.

Didn't play deadfire so I can't really comment on this, but if there's so much out of whack and exploitable, unintentionally I assume, then Sawyer is a terrible rules lawyer and an autist.

 

[Lacrymas]

Didn't play deadfire so I can't really comment on this, but if there's so much out of whack and exploitable, unintentionally I assume, then Sawyer is a terrible rules lawyer and an autist.

That's what I mean, most of this stuff seems unintentional and/or an oversight. Vampire cloak and old city shield maybe not, but killing your own summoned units to trigger enemy-only chillfog yes. This system doesn't seem like it has that Sawyer touch. Not that Sawyer can actually balance for shit, neither PoE1 nor 2 is in any way "balanced". I'd say that comes from the class design/philosophy in general. I (and not only I) have talked about this before, but I think the biggest downfall of PoE's system is the symmetrical balance of the classes. This "everyone can do everything" thing is very, very suspect and leads to weird streamlining and the tiniest of changes lead to disastrous results in terms of balance.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

My whole thing is if you have the mindset that everyone can do everything then why do classes at all then? Just create specialists using a GURPS styled model or something similar, ala Fallout / Arcanum and run from there. Classes are one of those things that are essentially pre-packaged specializations, that's why they exist. They're automatically good at one thing and bad at another. If you don't want pre-built specializations, or lock the player in based on what they choose, then don't fucking do classes.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's good being able to build a class in different ways, but yeah, too much role freedom in classes makes them pointless. It also tempts developers to balance them symmetrically, which is the worst kind of balancing.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

When you say symmetrically how do you mean?

 

[Latro]

then Sawyer is a terrible rules lawyer and an autist

Yes, that’s the pain of JS. He’s mr. balance but he’s not even good at it. Same with his history obsession.

 

[Lacrymas]

When you say symmetrically how do you mean?

Since everyone can be a DPS, for example, every class should be able to do 10 DPS by level 4 (also an example). This kind of balancing drags everything down with it and it makes it very easy for someone to become overpowered through the smallest of deviation from the others.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Actually, even auto-leveling schemas can be good for classes or mimicking classes. The only example I really remember of this is Arcanum, which had some cool names for their auto leveling stuff.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

When you say symmetrically how do you mean?

Since everyone can be a DPS, for example, every class should be able to do 10 DPS by level 4 (also an example). This kind of balancing drags everything down with it and it makes it very easy for someone to become overpowered through the smallest of deviation from the others.

Well that's based off poor reasoning on the part of the dev. They should focus on different types of damage, frequency of damage, energy usage / recharge rate, effectiveness against creature types, etc. Vary it up different ways so it has the potential to balance it out over the long term.

I mean, this is the issue of giving everyone similar abilities as well. Classes become indistinct. If you're gonna do classes, each one is distinct.

Wizardry 8 is the best example. Fighter. Thief. Bard. Gadgeteer. Monk. Ranger. Alchemist. Priest. Psionic. Lord. Valk. Samurai. Ninja. Even among the "boring" martial classes there's hella difference between them. They use the same weapons by and large, except for Ninja and Samurai, and come with a TON of difference between them. And they're simple differences.

Thief - Backstab, Theft, etc.
Samurai - Critical Strike, speed, and lightning strike plus the Mage spellbook. Mook with Giant's sword is insane.
Ranger - Ranged critical strike, alchemist spellbook. Put a Mook with a Giant's Sword in the middle and auto-switch from bow to melee when the enemy comes within range.
Monk - lots of melee potential plus psionic spellbook. Dwarf with its con based damage reduction is great to compensate for lack of armor.
Bard and Gadgeteer - Mega choices of SLAs plus either melee or ranged specialization - Dracon can work with either.

I mean, that's just the basics.

 

[Haplo]

Well, Deadfire has way more distinction between classes then a Wizardry title.