Development Info Josh Sawyer's GDC 2016 talk about attribute tuning in Pillars of Eternity

[Excidium II]

If you want to imagine your character as the traditional sickly thin intelligent wizard, you can make that character too, you just won't do as much damage.

And some actually think this is fine.

I find p. amusing when people do really questionable work then start inventing things to pretend it was intentional.

 

[Roguey]

And some actually think this is fine.

And it is because you get longer durations, and bigger areas-of-effect and more control over the edges wrt friendly fire.

 

[Excidium II]

I don't think the usefulness of the secondary stats the attributes affect in combat was even brought into question ITT.

 

[Trashos]

Another reason for Josh's approach being better from a game designer perspective - it's more in line with the times:
Just one example because I wrote a wall of text again - I have a friend, (I won't mention sex, because some people here are touchy) playing BGII for the first time ever, playing completely blind, and was very annoyed that his party sucked while trying to clear the tomb for Korgan not long after having entered the city. I advised that they get the Liliacor for Minsc before going to that tomb, and then it suddenly became a cakewalk. If I hadn't given that advise though, my friend would have probably dropped the game in frustration. My point is, a more 'old school', punitive system is suitable for a more patient and pedantic player than what we have today. The average PoE player's reaction to a similar situation would have been to go shitpost on the Obsidian forums of PoE being "bugged", and reach for another game in his steam library where he has a long backlog anyway. And that's not what Josh as a game designer wants.

What difficulty did your friend play on?

Because one of the things I do not understand is why PotD had to be easy as well. Fine, let the casuals have the rest of the difficulties, but PotD?

 

[Excidium II]

PotD also has doorways for you to block with a meat shield.

 

[Trashos]

PotD also has doorways for you to block with a meat shield.

I know what you are saying, but the situation didn't change much in open space.

 

[Kem0sabe]

SPECIAL stat system is bestest and most fun I've played with so far, doesn't have to be balanced to within an inch of its life to be a valid game mechanic.

 

[Excidium II]

SPECIAL stat system is bestest and most fun I've played with so far, doesn't have to be balanced to within an inch of its life to be a valid game mechanic.

AoD is balanced SPECIAL.

 

[Kem0sabe]

AoD is balanced SPECIAL.

Everything in AoD is balanced... If you save and reload enough times.

 

[ushas]

At most they help in text adventures. Again shows how much of an afterthought it is, but suddenly it defines characters. I guess Sawyer is lucky nobody at GDC audience played the game.

I would be a big supporter of QfG-like approach and beyond, however, I thought it was actually a design decision to have systems separated. Perhaps you are right and there is some afterthought. In White March it is possible to use knowledge of a spell in one of the text adventures. We will see in PoE2...

This argument seems all it's needed. Not that's important anyway.

Oh yeah, then why can't you set their stats? If it's meant to support more playstyles that's even more important.

I don't know. You cannot do it even when retraining, I guess?

A lots of bonuses from attributes are loosing their (often already not huge) impact with leveling in this game. Also, one can dress companions with gear towards desired playstyles and use buffs. Yeah, it's not a peak of minmaxing. On PotD I don't feel any issues with them so far (not sure whether that's a good sign). Beside that, isn't it possible to use console commands?

 

[Excidium II]

My point is that if it's about supporting multiple playstyles there's no better approach than letting the player distribute as he sees fit.

 

[Zanzoken]

I have always been sympathetic to Sawyer's design philosophy and thought the Codex was too hard on him, but if he literally said "no bad builds" then I guess you guys were right all along.

Making a game "balanced" does not mean you guarantee the player success. If I make a two-handed melee fighter with no strength, then that character SHOULD suck. Because any idiot should be able to see that if you want to fight with a huge battleaxe, your character needs to be strong in order to swing it.

The real meaning of balance is:

1) No choices are significantly better or significantly worse than the others.
2) When the player is presented with a choice, the player can be confident that their choice will be fun and viable IF it's used in a way that makes sense, both intuitively and within the context of the game world.

Thinking of it in these terms shows that balance is quite important. When players say stuff like "stay away from X because it is shit" then that's bad, because all the time you spent developing it was wasted and even worse, you are pissing on players who choose to play their character that way.

I always thought that's what Sawyer was shooting for with PoE -- no traps, no awesome buttons, no 40 hours of meta knowledge needed in order to build a good character. But "no bad builds" is what I'd expect from something like Fallout 4, not a serious attempt at making a classic RPG.

 

[ushas]

My point is that if it's about supporting multiple playstyles there's no better approach than letting the player distribute as he sees fit.

Yeah, I got your point.

By quick check at the inn, attributes can be changed for pc but not for companions when retraining (also you cannot change their lvl1 talents). Perhaps it's one of those things which fall under Josh's statement

We don't really care about people adjusting companion stats. Well, maybe a little.

(or it can also have something to do with coding, that those companion templates are handled differently...)

 

[Excidium II]

That'd be incredibly stupid.

 

[Trashos]

I have always been sympathetic to Sawyer's design philosophy and thought the Codex was too hard on him, but if he literally said "no bad builds" then I guess you guys were right all along.

Making a game "balanced" does not mean you guarantee the player success. If I make a two-handed melee fighter with no strength, then that character SHOULD suck. Because any idiot should be able to see that if you want to fight with a huge battleaxe, your character needs to be strong in order to swing it.

I think you are agreeing with Sawyer. He is speaking on the grounds of thinking about a build that you would like to play, and then being able to execute it successfully in-game. He is not speaking about completely idiotic builds.

His theory is a bit marred by how easy the game is. But, at least, the sucky build you described is indeed sucky in-game.

I always thought that's what Sawyer was shooting for with PoE -- no traps, no awesome buttons, no 40 hours of meta knowledge needed in order to build a good character. But "no bad builds" is what I'd expect from something like Fallout 4, not a serious attempt at making a classic RPG.

PoE is full of awesome buttons. You press a button, something awesome has to happen. Button-awesome connected now in PoE.

The lack of needing meta knowledge is unfortunately also one of the reasons why the game is too easy.

 

[Excidium II]

It was p. ironic that a game so concerned with balance came out so fuckin' unbalanced.

 

[felipepepe]

The biggest imbalance is difficulty-wise... you basically have 4 easy difficulties were you can just faceroll everyone and ignore all status effects. And there's PoTD, which is a huge difficulty jump from Hard, actually requires you to play attention but has fucking way to many monsters.

Also the Adra Dragon, king of cheapness, which is a middle-finger from the devs to the players... but you can kill with a single petrify spell because BALANCE.

 

[Veelq]

I always like his speeches, i can play a drinking game with a word "balance".
As for his points - i agree with him on "no dump stats", makes sense if you have complex enough system to handle that stuff.
I cannot agree with "no bad builds" tho, w/o bad decisions how can you make a good decision? Its C&C in character building w/o any bad consequences.

As for balance - its overrated in single player games imho.

 

[Excidium II]

PoE shows it's not overrated. I first made a paladin and it was so shitty I rerolled, it was the beginning of getting burned out, I did that whole starting section 3 times until I found a class that felt right (Monk).

 

[Ninjerk]

Monks are one of the more fun solo classes.

 

[Bubbles]

Also the Adra Dragon, king of cheapness, which is a middle-finger from the devs to the players... but you can kill with a single petrify spell because BALANCE.

The Adra Dragon gained a bunch of immunities, including petrification immunity, in 3.0

 

[Lyre Mors]

He said "no bad builds," but didn't he also say that people trying to min/max were going to kinda end up with essentially a bad build? It seemed like he was trying to subvert the expectations of those familiar with classic role-playing systems. I see the major flaw in that approach, but I also find it kind of interesting too. I've genuinely enjoyed getting to know the PoE system, particularly with the changes 3.0 introduced.

 

[TigerKnee]

He said "no bad builds," but didn't he also say that people trying to min/max were going to kinda end up with essentially a bad build?

I don't think he said that - he just said that if you build characters according to what you know from other games, the outcome might not be what you're regularly used to - the example being the standard D&D "Dump Strength, Max Int" Wizard which has no relevant drawbacks in D&D but would create a character that has no damage potential but be good at CC - a viable character but it might not be what a player might expect from experience.

 

[l3loodAngel]

I always like his speeches, i can play a drinking game with a word "balance".
1. As for his points - i agree with him on "no dump stats", makes sense if you have complex enough system to handle that stuff.
As for balance - its overrated in single player games imho.

No, no and no. No dump stats means that all options are equally or nearly equally valid. This translates into no bad builds, BUT that also means that there are no good builds/fun builds as all builds are the same. Its like eating without salt or like replacing 6 stats with one stat.

Also making stats being equally viable removes much of the complexity. Then there are no stat requirements, because with this approach it is fucking pointless. In Dnd if your fighter does not pass int requirement he cant take certain feats and become weapon master... While in POE everyone CAN and WILL become THE DRAGON.

I try to stay away from Obsi/Poe threads, but every time I think about the bad design decisions POE is the best game to illustrate it.
Oh and obligatory int vs charisma :

 

[Wizfall]

Except for the awful might attribute that affect physical damage as well as magical damage and healing, i like PoE system.
Unfortunately it's a huge issue as it is not only completely crazy from a role-playing perspective and break "immersion" (that simply makes absolutely no sense at all) but it reduces ridiculously options for a damage dealer build ( a good damage dealer have to put big numbers in might because not other stats can provide as much by very far) .

So in order to be able to create a "muscle" wizard, you can no longer create physical weak damage dealer wizard (only bodybuilder can cast powerful fireball yea) or rogue that are deadly more for their speed/agility rather than for their huge strength.
Great jobs to eliminate the viability of "classic stereotypical" fantasy archetypes in order to make viable un-stereotypical one, it for sure increase players' options.

If they could rethink about the might attribute for PoE 2 it would be great.
Then the only remaining issue would be the extreme specialization the combat mechanics encourage by creating "pure tank" or "pure damage dealer" but it's a not easy to solve, has improved with the better AI and avoidable except maybe on PoTD.
Moreover it does not break logic and immersion too much.