Interview Matt Chat 167: Josh Sawyer on Project Eternity

[G.O.D]

A lot of the games I play with dialog and I just to skip through as possible
...
What are you going to do to make me read this stuff

This.
He lost 10 reputation right there

 

[ghostdog]

Many thanks to Matt's Hungarian cousin J_C for forwarding our concerns about cooldowns to Matt !

I'm still not happy with the system. I'd much rather prefer combat areas that prevent resting + vancian.

 

[curry]

EDIT: Wait, J_C is or is not Matt. Wtf.

where is that god damned ghost.gif when you need it

 

[trais]

After watching this video I wanna make a kickstarter to buy Obsidian a few good mics. I mean seriously, if they are deliberately going for "please give us more money, because we're so poor that we can't even afford to buy a decent hardware to record our videos with", then they are doing terrific job, but otherwise it looks very, very unprofessional.

Anyways, more on the topic: Sawyer's cooldown system, while obviously better than WoW style cooldowns, is still crap. Because if people will have all their spells available in every encounter, they're gonna use same spell "rotation" over and over again. Which is tedious and boring. For example: party meets a group of orcs, so wizard whips his spellbook out and casts:
1. 3rd level mass slow
2. 4th level AoE damage (let's say ice blast)
3. another ice blast
4. 3rd level AoE (fireball)
and then even slowed orcs gets into melee range so he:
5. debuffs high threat targets
6. spam magic missile for the rest of the fight.

Later, party meets with another group of orcs and what does the wizard do? Exactly same bloody thing. Why if the party encounters enemies that are immune to slow? Well, he'll cast only one AoE and then kite and spam magic missile. What if they are enemies immune to cold? Then instead of casting 2 ice blasts and a fireball, he's cast 3 fireballs. What if he levels up and gain access to 5th level spell, like mass hold person? Then he'll use it instead of slow, without changing the rest of the rotation. But basically, you're doing same shit over and over again.

That problem doesn't exist with Vancian magic. Because wizard could pull 1, in higher levels maybe 2 spell rotations like that and he'll be out of magic for that day, giving the rest of his party an opportunity to shine. Even in shitty implementations that allows unlimited resting, you can at least LARP having a better system by conserving your spells and resting only in appropriate places.

Another thing that Sawyer's system implies:
HP bloat - because if wizard can cast 3 fireballs per encounter, all enemies will have to be resilient enough to eat that damage and still be healthy enough to give problems to the rest of the party.
Lower level spells becoming obsolete - nobody's gonna use fireballs when there are meteor swarms available, or bother with acid arrow when you can cast disintegrate instead.

 

[Spectacle]

Who started to use that name for magic anyway?

Larry Niven invented the concept of mana expended to power magic, though the word itself is of Maori origin.

 

[Derpy]

Who started to use that name for magic anyway?

Wikipedia cites Larry Niven's "Not Long Before the End" as the source for the term mana as related to magic power in fantasy. I suspect that biblical manna has a great deal to do with the proliferation of the term mana though. The terms aren't entirely unrelated, as manna was divinely (or magically) provided sustenance.

OTOH, the concept of mana could also be based on the polynesian belief that everything in the world is infused with spiritual power. According to ancient polynesian lore, there was no border between this world and a supernatural world. Religion was quite natural, present every moment and at any place, everything had its own spiritual "force", its own "mana".

EDIT: Spectacle beat me to it.

 

[Infinitron]

A lot of the games I play with dialog and I just to skip through as possible
...
What are you going to do to make me read this stuff

This.
He lost 10 reputation right there

Pfft. Matt is a well-known combatfag. (he's lying about the IE games being his favorites btw, dude's turn-based all the way)

 

[Zed]

"I'm out of mana!" cried Gandalf as sparks whizzed off his fingertips.
Frodo quickly searching his backpack and found a bottle filled with blue shimmering liquid. "Drink this!" he shouted desperately as the Balrog approached.
Gandalf chugged the blue contents of the bottle. "No! It's not enough points! My mana is still too low! Run! Get out of here!"

It's from lord of the rings you noobs. GRM MARTIN JR TOLKEN made ELVES, DWARVES, MEN, ORCS, MANA, TELEPORTATION, SUBMARINES and FIREBALLS first.
God... get educated. He was first with DRAGONS in the hobbit too.

 

[oldmanpaco]

J_C goddamn get a haircut. This is not 1986 and you are not in a hair band.

Also the problem with the magic cool-downs is that they are trying to fix something that's not broken. I liked the magic combat/strategy in the IE games. Cool-downs work much more naturally with physical feats and actions.

 

[felipepepe]

I don't usually skip text, but I got to agree that most recent RPGs just throw you pages and pages of exposition in a very retarded way... games like Amalur or Divinity 2 seems to want you to learn the entire game lore in the first 2 NPCs.

 

[Gurkog]

After watching this video I wanna make a kickstarter to buy Obsidian a few good mics. I mean seriously, if they are deliberately going for "please give us more money, because we're so poor that we can't even afford to buy a decent hardware to record our videos with", then they are doing terrific job, but otherwise it looks very, very unprofessional.

Anyways, more on the topic: Sawyer's cooldown system, while obviously better than WoW style cooldowns, is still crap. Because if people will have all their spells available in every encounter, they're gonna use same spell "rotation" over and over again. Which is tedious and boring. For example: party meets a group of orcs, so wizard whips his spellbook out and casts:
1. 3rd level mass slow
2. 4th level AoE damage (let's say ice blast)
3. another ice blast
4. 3rd level AoE (fireball)
and then even slowed orcs gets into melee range so he:
5. debuffs high threat targets
6. spam magic missile for the rest of the fight.

Later, party meets with another group of orcs and what does the wizard do? Exactly same bloody thing. Why if the party encounters enemies that are immune to slow? Well, he'll cast only one AoE and then kite and spam magic missile. What if they are enemies immune to cold? Then instead of casting 2 ice blasts and a fireball, he's cast 3 fireballs. What if he levels up and gain access to 5th level spell, like mass hold person? Then he'll use it instead of slow, without changing the rest of the rotation. But basically, you're doing same shit over and over again.

That problem doesn't exist with Vancian magic. Because wizard could pull 1, in higher levels maybe 2 spell rotations like that and he'll be out of magic for that day, giving the rest of his party an opportunity to shine. Even in shitty implementations that allows unlimited resting, you can at least LARP having a better system by conserving your spells and resting only in appropriate places.

Another thing that Sawyer's system implies:
HP bloat - because if wizard can cast 3 fireballs per encounter, all enemies will have to be resilient enough to eat that damage and still be healthy enough to give problems to the rest of the party.
Lower level spells becoming obsolete - nobody's gonna use fireballs when there are meteor swarms available, or bother with acid arrow when you can cast disintegrate instead.

Apparently you weren't listening to him (probably blinded by knee-jerk nerd rage). The higher level spells will have to be replenished by resting, but each of the lower levels will be on their own separate cooldown timers after they have been emptied in combat. The higher level the character the more of the lower levels will replenish without resting. It seems quite simple and workable to me. Weak spells that do not take much effort can be used without overexerting the mage, but bigger ones require a nap to use again after being spent.

EDIT: by the way, I have been reading ya'lls comments since Project Eternity began and I find your discussions amusing and disturbing, but always entertaining. I thought I would just chime in on this topic.

 

[Azalin]

Good interview J_C Matt,you gain extra points for putting a Codex question and an MCA photo with Pip-Boy and suit.
Josh's rant about magic was nice

 

[LeStryfe79]

Sounds good as long as there are tactical considerations for resting as well. Hunger, fatigue, darkness, ect are nice replacements for pure Vancian when dealing with realistic exploratory pursuits. I hope these are at least included in one of the "modes", since I'd hate to get screwed out of larping this shit. Also, I want to play an alcoholic and hope booze is in as a quality resource I need to manage. Please guys, I'm not asking too much here.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I don't like beer to much to be honest. I'm more of a wine guy.

 

[trais]

Apparently you weren't listening to him (probably blinded by knee-jerk nerd rage). The higher level spells will have to be replenished by resting, but each of the lower levels will be on their own separate cooldown timers after they have been emptied in combat. The higher level the character the more of the lower levels will replenish without resting. It seems quite simple and workable to me. Weak spells that do not take much effort can be used without overexerting the mage, but bigger ones require a nap to use again after being spent.

He didn't said that in the interview, stop imagining things you stupid fanboy. He talked about spells getting off cooldowns "after a fight or between fights" (13:15 in video). Then he talked about swapping different set of spells which still wouldn't require resting (15:12).

 

[hoverdog]

I don't like beer to much to be honest. I'm more of a wine guy.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

"I was going to interview some loser, but fuck that! PROJEKT ETERNITEH!"

 

[asper]

The information about the spell system is interesting. It sounds like it might be quite good.

 

[A user named cat]

So is J_C like Clark Kent when he's on the Codex? I'm not falling for it.

 

[CrustyBot]

So is J_C like Clark Kent when he's on the Codex? I'm not falling for it.

But when the time comes...

 

[J_C]

 

[rpgcodexusername]

During the interview Josh, to his chagrin, couldnt help but acknowledge his awareness of the website that haunted his dreams.

Talking of devs and codex, Burger Bill should register an account here.

 

[Mother Russia]

I am not a big fan of cooldowns, but I have to admit they are a thousand times better than the retarded and stupid Vancian system used in D&D.

Realms of Arkania had the best system IMO, Astral Energy. It is not just mana renamed, for in the series your astral points recovered very, very slowly. Also, there was no potion chugging because there were no potions. There were just a bare few potions but those had to be treasured and preserved for those desperate times when they were truly needed, and even then they only restored a bare minimum of astral points.

I would more than welcome new types of systems though. In pnp WFRP 2.0 had the best system. You could cast spells whenever you wanted, but there was a risk. With higher power spells the risk increased exponentially (you could summon a powerful demon that would attack the party, you could destroy everything in a certain radius killing yourself, your allies and all enemies with no chance of saving against damager..insta kill, etc etc)

 

[Gurkog]

Apparently you weren't listening to him (probably blinded by knee-jerk nerd rage). The higher level spells will have to be replenished by resting, but each of the lower levels will be on their own separate cooldown timers after they have been emptied in combat. The higher level the character the more of the lower levels will replenish without resting. It seems quite simple and workable to me. Weak spells that do not take much effort can be used without overexerting the mage, but bigger ones require a nap to use again after being spent.

He didn't said that in the interview, stop imagining things you stupid fanboy. He talked about spells getting off cooldowns "after a fight or between fights" (13:15 in video). Then he talked about swapping different set of spells which still wouldn't require resting (15:12).

Maybe I was thinking of another video, hehe. He did explain somewhere that they were designing something like what I described. Sawyer does not like full 'vancian' because he thinks characters should have some value at all times. I am not saying that he wants to make wizards kick ass 24/7, but they will be able to do more than throw pebbles most of the time.

 

[trais]

Maybe I was thinking of another video, hehe. He did explain somewhere that they were designing something like what I described. Sawyer does not like full 'vancian' because he thinks characters should have some value at all times. I am not saying that he wants to make wizards kick ass 24/7, but they will be able to do more than throw pebbles most of the time.

It's even more stupid, because if you're gonna lock people's best toys (ie. highest level spells) behind resting mechanic, then people are gonna be tempted to rest after every combat anyways, so you really gain nothing compared to pure vancian system.

I've got a feeling that Sawyer really wanted to design single character action-rpg but he was instead forced to work on PE, so he's trying to fit the square peg into round hole.
Vancian magic is perfectly balanced in party based games, because while wizards often are only "throwing pebbles" while fighters destroy trash-mobs left and right, in difficult battles it's wizard's turn to be awesome and fighters are only serving as his meat-shield. And that's perfectly fine, because in the long run, you can't do without both, ergo: nobody is useless. Especially in cRPGs where you control the whole party, so there nobody to get his feeling hurt that he's not the one pressing the awesome button right now.

If you want to homogenize classes and remove wizard's biggest limiting factor - relative infrequency of his spells - then you'll also need to nerf their power to balance it out. And as the result basically you get a glorified archer with slight AoE flavor. And from there you go to classic tank-healer-dps trichotomy, which may work fine in MMOs, but sucks in single player party based RPGs.