Game News Josh Sawyer's GDC Next Presentation Slides

[Sensuki]

“useless” abilities on the other hand are a problem of the designer. No ability is really useless (unless redundant). It is only made so due to the LACK OF CONTENT. The role of the game designer is to ADD that content to the game so that usefulness become tangible. Somehow this inexorably escapes Josh Sawyer. Hence no ability to break doors. He conflates Redundancy with uselessness.

Definitely true for skills, but combat is a bit different.

The combat design is definitely a bit 'different'. Weird stat design, very low power curve (abilities and spells not scaling with level), no ability overlaps, homogeneous progression, no proficiencies (besides class ability & talent based). The good thing is that in a recent anecdote it sounded like you 'miss' not having classes in the party. You'll definitely miss having a Fighter if you don't have one in the party, same with a Priest, Wizard, Cipher, Paladin. That gives me some hope at least, even if I'm not the hugest fan of the progression design.

 

[Sensuki]

What do you mean exactly?

Quite a lot of the class design is already hammered down pretty solidly.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeh I'll try and go over them briefly for you

Attack resolution is the same as before - 100 sided die, 1-5 = Miss, 6-50 = Graze, 51-95 = Hit, 96-100 = Critical Hit. This rule assumes that the target's defense is equal to your accuracy score. The difference between them slides the values in one way or the other, and at extremes it can be possible to never miss or never crit something.

Advancement is now in 100 point system as well, where +1 = +5, +2 = +10 etc

Damage uses set ranges, for instance Longsword might be 5-8 instead of 1-8. Crits and Grazes have been changed - Grazes used to be half minimum damage, now they're half rolled damage. Crits are now the same 1.5x rolled damage (rather than 1.5x max damage) - which IMO is better. Procs (percentile damage, for instance the +1 cold damage on a sword in IE games is now a percentage of weapon damage, and it uses some funky maths relative to armor)

Weapon Stability? not sure what you mean by that, elaborate.

Armor is kind of like flat DR now. Armor has a DT (Damage Threshold) which you subtract from your damage roll. There is a minimum amount of weapon damage that always passes through armor - but that's a weapon property, not an armor property. Procs (as mentioned above) from the last quote now target 25% of DT rather than the number of the proc - eg. previously 15% fire damage was reduced by 15% DT, now it's 25% for all procs or something like that.

Most of the current abilities are available on the Wiki, but there's probably a few floating around that the cronies haven't picked up on yet.

Health/Stamina hasn't changed. Health takes 25% damage from every hit, Stamina 100% (1:4). Barbarians take less health damage than other classes (instead of having more HP).

Technically a lot of stuff is subject to change until ship, but that's where they're at currently with basic systems.

 

[Sensuki]

Degradation of items and weapons.

cut from game, and regarding crits/misses - it is rare that you will ever find that you have the same accuracy as the defense of a monster, it might be like 10-20 less or 10-20 more (or even more skewed), so there will be stages where you will crit often, or be crit often.

I don't think there will be hp bloat tbh, I think battles will be similarly paced to IE.

Armor types have set weaknesses that are flat across all armors of that type. EG Plate currently has -50% shock DT. See a guy in Full Plate? Prepare your lightning bolts.

 

[Sensuki]

My point is based off something Josh Sawyer said - one of the goals of the Prototype was to get the 'feel' right for combat, and one of those pillars was the time. Characters/Monsters may have more hp/do more damage but if combat generally lasts between 10-30 unpaused secs then that's good IMO.

 

[Infinitron]

PE won't have HP bloat, but it probably won't have ultra weak characters, like level 1 D&D characters or low level D&D mages, either. Judging by what we know of the design (shallow power curve, horizontal growth), you'll probably start with a decently sized HP pool that will increase relatively slowly over the course of the game.

 

[2house2fly]

“useless” abilities on the other hand are a problem of the designer. No ability is really useless (unless redundant). It is only made so due to the LACK OF CONTENT. The role of the game designer is to ADD that content to the game so that usefulness become tangible. Somehow this inexorably escapes Josh Sawyer. Hence no ability to break doors. He conflates Redundancy with uselessness.

Sawyer is entirely aware of this. I forget the exact quote but in one of those formspring response videos he's got on youtube he says something along the lines of

If you give the player the option to put points in either Lockpicking or Translate Ancient Poetry, you'd better have some fuckin Ancient Poetry for them to Translate if they pick that.

 

[Infinitron]

The door bashing thing may actually be a red herring since all characters in PE benefit from both Strength and whatever skill grants lock picking. Both have combat benefits for all classes, not just Rogues. If there's a tradeoff for bashing (alerts nearby enemies) then even better.

Tl;Dr Josh Sawyer is not Roguey.

 

[Athelas]

I hope you will be able to bash a door open with offensive magic.

 

[Azrael the cat]

To be more precise: I have been bringing this point back again and again and somehow Sawyertards simply do not seem to understand it. This is the “Lockpicking/Doorbreaking” problem all over again.


There are two things here: Overlapping abilities and “useless” abilities. The quotes are important and I will try to explain why in the latter part.


Overlapping abilities are of course bad. That is redundant content and should go away.


“useless” abilities on the other hand are a problem of the designer. No ability is really useless (unless redundant). It is only made so due to the LACK OF CONTENT. The role of the game designer is to ADD that content to the game so that usefulness become tangible. Somehow this inexorably escapes Josh Sawyer. Hence no ability to break doors. He conflates Redundancy with uselessness.

There's always going to be limits to the content one can implenent, which means there will often be scenarios where cutting an ability is the pragmatic best option.

 

[Infinitron]

I hope you will be able to bash a door open with offensive magic.

Not even the IE games let you do that! Although NWN did.

Ideally it would be possible, but it could turn locked doors into a complete non-obstacle for high level mages (who have per-encounter fireballs or something). Maybe introduce magic-resistant doors at high levels?

 

[Roguey]

Both have combat benefits for all classes, not just Rogues. If there's a tradeoff for bashing (alerts nearby enemies) then even better.

Tl;Dr Josh Sawyer is not Roguey.

That's not a trade-off.
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/237397979017788301
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/237607452625867579

 

[Infinitron]

Both have combat benefits for all classes, not just Rogues. If there's a tradeoff for bashing (alerts nearby enemies) then even better.

Tl;Dr Josh Sawyer is not Roguey.

That's not a trade-off.
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/237397979017788301
http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/237607452625867579

He's talking about FO:NV. What's true for a first person shooter doesn't necessarily apply to a party-based isometric RPG.

Essentially, if a system makes players never even consider taking a certain skill

In an isometric RPG like PE, the system may very well have reasons for players to consider taking the lockpick skill, despite the existence of door bashing.

That was certainly the case in the Infinity Engine games, which had bashing. (they did it by making bashing very weak and generally unusable unless you boosted your strength to unnatural levels via consumables)

By all appearances, Stealth will be a more well-developed approach in PE than in FO:NV, and it's a game for a less popamole audience that is less likely to see "shooting everyone in the face anyway" as the solution to all encounters, so the trade-off is more significant here.

Bottom line, I wouldn't rule out the existence of door bashing in PE. The designer's toolkit for making both bashing and picking viable options is much richer in PE than in a game like FO:NV. And that's disregarding the ability to simply create different TYPES of doors and chests, some of which are much more easily pickable, some of which are much more easily bashable. Boom, both skills are now attractive choices. Not so hard, is it?

Beyond that, one wonders whether locked doors and locked chests are even important enough in a game like this to make them a significant challenge at all, especially after one reaches a certain level. A high level party is pretty much guaranteed to have somebody in it who can pop open anything. At that point, what does it matter if you have a few other ways to do it besides lockpicking? It's a trivial task anyway. It's like how Sawyer admitted that traps outside of combat are basically a speed bump: http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/468523144353698661

 

[crawlkill]

check it out, guys, this game will feature Lightning and Otiluke's Resilient Sphere without licensing concerns.

I really hope PE doesn't play with that "spend the first three rounds before/of combat buffing" shit that plagues IE games. if there are buffs you could need in every fight...you should be able to set them up to go off automatically at the start of every fight.

Beyond that, one wonders whether locked doors and locked chests are even important enough in a game like this to make them a significant challenge at all, especially after one reaches a certain level. A high level party is pretty much guaranteed to have somebody in it who can pop open anything. At that point, what does it matter if you have a few other ways to do it besides lockpicking? It's a trivial task anyway. It's like how Sawyer admitted that traps outside of combat are basically a speed bump: http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/468523144353698661

The problem (if it is a problem) with IE's "party skills" system is that it doesn't require for any kind of trade-offs. You never have one choice pitted against another choice: You have six choices to make. Even individual characters never make a choice more interesting than "pick lock vs pick pocket," which anyone who actually gives a shit about the game can readily see the relative value of, or "longsword versus scimitar," which will only ever create frustration, not affirmation, as a choice (you'll never say "I'm glad I took longswords," because you're ignoring shitty scimitars, but you might say "why can't I use scimitars?" because you'd sure notice scimitars better than your longswords). Sorcerers had to choose which spells they wanted, sure, but if they fucked up, they became next to useless. Meaningful specialization is binary/three-way/four-way and exclusive. Take one thing and forever (or until respec) forsake another, that's specialization. And I'm still not sure it would make for a better gameplay experience than just being able to solve most problems most times.

I don't understand why this community defines RPGs in terms of numbers on a sheet. To my mind, RPGs are about narrative choices, especially non-obvious ones that the game can still respond to. I don't feel the need to be offered dialogue options based on my stats; I'd rather be offered dialogue options based on the details of the world that I'd bothered to find and interact with, the people I'd spoken to, the things my character had encountered and learned. Give me flags, not statchecks. I want my character's ideas about a scenario to develop alongside mine, not based on some figure on some screen somewhere.

 

[Monty]

if there are buffs you could need in every fight...you should be able to set them up to go off automatically at the start of every fight.

Why make them buffs then, why don't they just build the resistances into your character to save you even more time and effort? How about a permanent globe of invulnerability for your mage and some regenerating stoneskins so you can cruise through the game seeing all that sweet content?

Only relentless rest spammers cast buffs for every single fight they "could need" them in, without having to save them for tougher encounters. And discouraging rest spamming is a much bigger issue than the 'hassle' of casting buffs in the toughest battles, imo.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Perhaps you're confusing the adventure with the RPG genre.

 

[crawlkill]

if there are buffs you could need in every fight...you should be able to set them up to go off automatically at the start of every fight.

Why make them buffs then, why don't they just build the resistances into your character to save you even more time and effort? How about a permanent globe of invulnerability for your mage and some regenerating stoneskins so you can cruise through the game seeing all that sweet content?

You might recall that every high level caster in BG2 had a Sequencer throwing up as many of the same set of defensive spells as it could. Later on, they'd then cast Timestop and make you watch for nine seconds or so while they cast even more! You found that fascinating, did you?

The difference between "contingency combat activation" spells and "always on" spells is only and exclusively that the contingency activation spells might have limited charges and might then be re-activatable later on in a long combat. IE defensive spells frequently had charge limits. That's why they weren't "passive." You -could- have a passive charge-based buff system, absolutely. I think it would be more interesting to make those decisions 30 seconds into an intense fight (when the cooldown finally comes up! I've been waiting 15 tense seconds for this!) than not be able to have those decisions be passive.

Perhaps you're confusing the adventure with the RPG genre.

The delineation is narrow. In my mind, an adventure game tends toward a narrow set of paths. I missed the golden era of 90s adventure games, though, so maybe there are lots of adventure games that have many branching sub-areas that in some way contribute to the final result of the game?

Just fucking make spell components and make them rare. Problems solved.

You've, uh, played an RPG, right? Later encounters tend to be harder than earlier encounters, and so players tend to conserve resources in a big way. You'd better give them sorcerers a safe and meaningful way to participate in encounters they're not willing to expend these "rare" components on, or else only people who already know the end of the game is approaching will use em.

 

[Infinitron]

It's already confirmed that PE will have fast buffs (some with a toggle on/toggle off type functionality). JES hates the D&D pre-battle buffing monotony.

 

[crawlkill]

Make encounters hard so that you HAVE TO BUFF UP. Is it that hard to get????

make every encounter identical so that you have to click the same zilliondy buttons in the same order every time so that the enemy who clicks them automatically doesn't undo you instantly with the spells you'd've undone him instantly with if he hadn't automatically gotten the protections you need to have automatically because--

you silly

 

[Roguey]

He's talking about FO:NV. What's true for a first person shooter doesn't necessarily apply to a party-based isometric RPG.

I believe with full confidence that there won't be lockbashing in Eternity.

Beyond that, one wonders whether locked doors and locked chests are even important enough in a game like this to make them a significant challenge at all, especially after one reaches a certain level. A high level party is pretty much guaranteed to have somebody in it who can pop open anything. At that point, what does it matter if you have a few other ways to do it besides lockpicking? It's a trivial task anyway. It's like how Sawyer admitted that traps outside of combat are basically a speed bump: http://new.spring.me/#!/JESawyer/q/468523144353698661

You won't be able to take every skill and Josh wants to have lockpicks as a consumable resource.

 

[crawlkill]

Make encounters hard so that you HAVE TO BUFF UP. Is it that hard to get????

make every encounter identical so that you have to click the same zilliondy buttons in the same order every time so that the enemy who clicks them automatically doesn't undo you instantly with the spells you'd've undone him instantly with if he hadn't automatically gotten the protections you need to have automatically because--

you silly

Wow..

Sawyerite detected.

seriously. show me an encounter with any high-level mage in BG2 that didn't open with this behavior.

 

[Monty]

seriously. show me an encounter with any high-level mage in BG2 that didn't open with this behavior.

Yes, the high-level enemy mages in BG2 were given sequencers and contingencies to counter-balance the meta knowledge and preparation of the PC. Otherwise you'd arrive ready for battle loaded up with buffs and summons and the squishy enemy mage would have to start from scratch casting his first spell.

Not perfect perhaps, but I thought it worked reasonably well and enjoyed some of these battles. Giving the PC more automatic buffs or whatever would have shifted this balance too much IMO.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

seriously. show me an encounter with any high-level mage in BG2 that didn't open with this behavior.

In unmodded (non-SCS) BG2? Most mage encounters opened (and closed) with my PC chunking them with a backstab, other than that you also had traps and items (wands, belts, cloaks, armor, weapons, potions etc.) that could be used to counter mages, you also had non-mage classes who were especially good at dealing with mages (Mage slayer and Inquisitor).

No matter how much people claim otherwise, there were alternatives in BG2 when it comes to facing mages, you weren't forced exclusively to fight fire with fire.

 

[Roguey]

In unmodded (non-SCS) BG2? Most mage encounters opened (and closed) with my PC chunking them with a backstab, other than that you also had traps and items (wands, belts, cloaks, armor, weapons, potions etc.) that could be used to counter mages, you also had non-mage classes who were especially good at dealing with mages (Mage slayer and Inquisitor).

No matter how much people claim otherwise, there were alternatives in BG2 when it comes to facing mages, you weren't forced exclusively to fight fire with fire.

There were a number of mages who could automatically detect stealthy/invisible characters and would immediately put up all their buffs/cast true sight and so on.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

There were a number of mages who could automatically detect stealthy/invisible characters and would immediately put up all their buffs/cast true sight and so on.

True sight won't work on a thief hiding in shadows who's wearing a cloak of non-detection (which you can get very early in the game) and many of buffs don't last all that long.

Of course some of the non-human enemies see you without dispelling your invisibility, though some of them can still be backstabbed regardless (like demons and liches).