Interview Matt Chat 167: Josh Sawyer on Project Eternity

[Cynic]

punishing the player for wasting time is good but time limits are fucking bad.

o_O

 

[Cosmo]

He means explicit and arbitrary time limits are bad.
In your gnoll example, maybe a ranger who knows gnoll customs could roughly guess what time the group has before the gnolls are able to go to war. But the DM can very well decide to advance or postpone the date, depending on what information the players missed or simply can't discover.
A seven days countdown is retarded, except if the main gnoll priest declared openly that his tribe should overrun the city on a cetain day to commemorate his god or some shit like that...

 

[Cynic]

So let's say you get the quest from the captain of the guard in the nearest town. He says we have about 7 days until the town near by is overrun by Gnolls. The captain of the guard of the town in danger has sent out a call for aid to anyone in the area. The quest giver also tells the player that he's learned that the Gnolls are waiting for their leader to return from another conquest to lead the assault. But of course your religious reason works fine as well.

I just don't see anything wrong with this. As I said, these would be non essential quests. Nothing game breaking.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I must say I don't really get the anti-time-limit crowd's arguments either. Obviously the time limit would need to have a halfway reasonable ingame justification, but I don't think it's a problem in most cases. Taking the goblin example, the leader of the threatened town could just say something like "according to our scouts/ spies the goblin army will be propably ready to attack in about a week". This would give the player enough information to decide if and when to tackle the quest.

Btw, I also really like Cynic's suggestion of having monsters in a dungeon regroup and call in reinforcements when the player party rests too often and lets too much time pass by.

 

[Cosmo]

It's just that on one hand you should keep the players on edge by giving them hints that the 7 days limit may or may not be accurate (questgiver is just a man and prone to mistakes), and on the other hand you should enable them to act on the reasons that makes said time limit relevant (by killing the priest, intercepting the warchief, etc).

It must feel like it's just another element of the game world that can be acted upon, and not some arbitrary element given by the DM.

And i believe Excidium's bothered not so much by that particular thing, but rather by DM arbitrarily limitating PC's possibilities to railroad a scenario...

 

[Roguey]

The retardation in this argument is of epic proportions. You can make the same argument about any fucking system that ever existed. Why not just cheat? Just console your chars to max level from the start and be done with it? Why even fucking play the game?

Appeal to ridicule.

So there are some issues with a system that has some REALLY FUCKING good benefits. Who cares! Fuck it and throw it all out the door rather than think up a creative solution to the problem. It's too complex for casuals anwyay. Casuals like MMOs, let's put MMO mechanics in our RPG, yes!

But Eternity's deal is a creative solution because it's never been done before. Some Vancian elements are also still there.

THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO FIX THIS SHIT without losing the inherit benefits of a Vancian system it's mind boggling to see anyone defending its loss. Especially here.

And yet they never have. From the period between 1998-2008 when D&D games were being made with regularity, no one solved the problem.

Here's a few I am thinking of in like 5 seconds...

1. Time limited quests where success / failure effects the game world and or party's reputation (added bonus game is more REPLAYABLE
2. Resting at safe locations can cause some enemies to regroup in certain areas
3. Very small chance that super rare monsters appear through resting in safe areas - they have a chance to drop good loot or lots of cash
4. Finding good areas to rest in is tied to a skill check

1. Time limits fail in a real time with pause game because the clock's always ticking. Having to remember to pause every time you want to manage inventory or read something is annoying. This also ends up encouraging people to not use their mage spells at all in case they "really need them later."
2. Sawyer's already mentioned doing this for every area is the equivalent of designing it 1.5 times. Say goodbye to your content. Once again encourages people not to use their mage spells at all.
3. Would encourage people to rest all the time, back to degeneracy.
4. Everyone takes that no-brainer skill, doesn't solve any problems.

Your ideas are terrible.

If you want to make the game piss poor easy for yourself you're going to find a way to do it no matter what. That's your problem. This is why you should play casual mode. But don't fuck it up for everyone else with your retarded ideas.

Because this is about making it easier and not about both removing tedious repetitive actions and encouraging people to use their mages for more than just slinging stones for 90% of the time.

 

[Cynic]

What the fuck? Clock is always ticking? You can has programming knowledge? This confirms you as totally retarded.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

1. Time limits fail in a real time with pause game because the clock's always ticking. Having to remember to pause every time you want to manage inventory or read something is annoying. This also ends up encouraging people to not use their mage spells at all in case they "really need them later."

Nope, not necessarily. Take Fallout's water supply-limit as an example. When you were in hubs, towns or other locations time moved very slowly, so you could explore pretty much at leasure and didn't have to worry. The only two instances where the time limit kicked in were travelling on the overland map and resting, because with one click several hours or days passed by.

So with a time limit you can let the player explore dungeons, cities, towns, wilderness etc. pretty much at leisure (by making time run very slowly, like 2 or 3 rl hours for 1 ingame day or so), yet still punish him for rest spamming. no problem with that. You could also make time stop automaticly when the players opens a book or manages his inventory. Really no problem with that. It's not about keeping the player in a constant hurry, it's just about adding time as a strategic element to the gameworld.

 

[FeelTheRads]

You're assuming Roguey actually understands anything about game development and doesn't just parrot whatever bullshit Sawyer, who's never done anything of note, says.

 

[Cynic]

You're assuming Roguey actually understands anything about game development and doesn't just parrot whatever bullshit Sawyer, who's never done anything of note, says.

Sawyer might have some talent, but the first two points she made show VERY CLEARLY that she has no fucking idea about what she is talking about. I literally laughed out loud when I read the first point, and then felt pity at the second.

 

[Roguey]

Turns out Cynic is a moron with delusions of competency, welp.

Nope, not necessarily. Take Fallout's water supply-limit as an example. When you were in hubs, towns or other locations time moved very slowly, so you could explore pretty much at leasure and didn't have to worry. The only two instances where the time limit kicked in were travelling on the overland map and resting, because with one click several hours or days passed by.

Fallout's time limit was so lenient as to be trivial. You never needed to rest-spam in a game that flooded you with stimpaks anyway. Whereas in a game with Vancian casting you kind of do unless it has a crafting system you can break like in Knights of the Chalice. Also does not solve This also ends up encouraging people to not use their mage spells at all in case they "really need them later.". Remember Sawyer's trying to kill two birds with one stone here.

So with a time limit you can let the player explore dungeons, cities, towns, wilderness etc. pretty much at leisure (by making time run very slowly, like 2 or 3 rl hours for 1 ingame day or so), yet still punish him for rest spamming. no problem with that. You could also make time stop automaticly when the players opens a book or manages his inventory. Really no problem with that. It's not about keeping the player in a constant hurry, it's just about adding time as a strategic element to the gameworld.

Yet Mask of the Betrayer did not allow this with its always-on-hunger meter ('cept in conversations).

One more thing: Time limits in RPGs are an unpopular feature (see massive criticism regarding spirit meter, Fallout's 150 days for all its leniency). You can't fix something for the majority of the audience with a feature that same majority also hates FFS.

 

[Cynic]

Roguey you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Delusions of competency? I program for a living you half wit. You have two modes, talking out of your ass, and sucking Sawyer's dick. Your posts show that you really have a very poor understanding of any of the processes that go into building any kind of system or application. Stop wasting precious Internet space with your inane ramblings.

This also ends up encouraging people to not use their mage spells at all in case they "really need them later."

Laughing my fucking ass off. Ever heard of scrolls? Like how Mages can scribe and cast them even when they haven't got any spells memorized? Wands perhaps? BUT MAGES ARE TOTALLY USELESS WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF SPELLS GUIZE! Give me a fucking break.

Please, if you tell me you are just trolling then it will be the funniest thing ever, if not then you need to just fuck right off. Your views are shit, and you should feel ashamed of them.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. Delusions of competency? I program for a living you half wit. You have two modes, talking out of your ass, and sucking Sawyer's dick. Your posts show that you really have a very poor understanding of any of the processes that go into building any kind of system or application. Stop wasting precious Internet space with your inane ramblings.

Appeal to ridicule, followed by a strawman, followed by appeal to accomplishment. You don't have the brains to argue. Hell, you don't even have the brains to make a good character in Fallout, one of the easiest RPGs of all time. Debating you is a waste of time.

Laughing my fucking ass off. Ever heard of scrolls? Like how Mages can scribe and cast them even when they haven't got any spells memorized? Wands perhaps? BUT MAGES ARE TOTALLY USELESS WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF SPELLS GUIZE! Give me a fucking break.

in case they "really need them later." still applies. Don't underestimate the average player's need to hoard things for unforeseen difficulty spikes. Unless they happen to be overflowing with those items, in which case what's the point?

 

[Cynic]

Roguey Haha oh wow. I'm not arguing. You're too far beneath me in intelligence and knowledge to have an argument with me. It's blatantly obvious from all that you say. You have no idea about even the most BASIC things which you claim to know about, it's quite sad honestly. You can't actually back up your statements with examples or creative thoughts because you have none. You either avoid replying (Hurrr durr appeal to ridicule herpa derpa strawman, did you learn how to communicate in life through the Bioware forums?) or just parrot what some dev said (clearly without understanding any kind of programmatical reasons for them saying it and therefore why it might be total bullshit). So it's more like I am just telling you, you have shit views and you should feel ashamed of them. There's no argument to be had.

 

[Roguey]

Appeal to ridicule, followed by a strawman, followed by appeal to accomplishment. You don't have the brains to argue. Hell, you don't even have the brains to make a good character in Fallout, one of the easiest RPGs of all time. Debating you is a waste of time.

You lost any kind of debate power with that "time always running" retardation. So, yeah, debating with you is a waste of time. All that can be done is point and laugh.

I used an example from a game Obsidian's already made (Mask of the Betrayer). Of course you and Cynic are too stupid to even notice that. Nice try though.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I deleted my post. Better reply to Cynic.

 

[Roguey]

Ah yes let me counter YOU CAN'T ARGUE WITH ME ABOUT DESIGN! I'M A PROGRAMMER! LOOK AT ALL THESE PROGRAMMING SOLUTIONS TO DESIGN PROBLEMS I CAME UP WITH THAT DON'T EVEN ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THE TWO PARTICULAR PROBLEMS SAWYER WANTS TO ADDRESS. ALSO I'M GOING TO STRAWMAN LIKE A MOTHER FUCKER BY ONLY FOCUSING ONE SINGLE POINT

 

[Mrowak]

Roguey Cynic

You guys realise that you are throwing poo, losing nerves and generally wasting your breath over illusory nonsense that has no meaning whatsoever, in any dimension, no matter the way you look at it as long as you won't act upon what you are stating?

To my mind both parties do not understand what the other one is saying.

Personally, I am a great proponent of Vancian system... but the issues Roguey identified are pretty valid (e.g. the question of conserving your power and ending up never using your full potential - if game allows that it the encounter design *might* suffer). Likewise Cynic has a couple of good points (the idea of time passing, and quest parameters changing the longer you dawdle - the problem is how important those quest parameters are, and their implementation).

So far I quite like what Obsidian is trying to do with traditional Vancian system. I am not entirely pleased, but that's at least some variety, and they have a long way to go (playtesting and stuffies). Things are bound to change as they work.

 

[4too]

No School Like An OL'd S-Kool!™


After witnessing this bandwidth challenged interview, audio via tin can acoustics, saw Matt Chat 101 Baldur's Gate.

Watched that.

Got reminded, an essential old school game play feature was / is … THE PIXEL HUNT.

Wake me with, a can't live with out, Project Eternity spoon feeding when this mandatory point and click stretch goal is established.

3.2 … 4 million?

Or, did I miss it in the waves of Infinity nostalgia .

Also watched the first two Sandy Petersen interviews.

A Cthulhu Strategy game Kick-starter on the event horizon?

The man weaned on board games, and HP, back when it meant Lovecraft, that's ol' ol'd s-kool!™

For once look forward to M-Chant, # 168!



4too

 

[Commissar Draco]

Reinforcing urgency and punishing the player for wasting time or getting sidetracked is good but time limits are fucking bad.

The flow of time falls upon the GM's good senses in pnp, but there's no such thing in CRPGs. Good luck finding a good substitute. Best way in my opinion is using triggers, but even then...Guess that's why devs don't bother with time and let the Rising Evil wait patiently for the Heroes to finish helping every person with a problem they meet on the road.

They do this cause games must be inclusive for every casual peasant who happened to watch the advert and buy their product, cause you know they tend to whine and not buy Skyrim 23 when not able to do everything in one playthrough. Time limits when done in reasonable fashion are fine so is limiting quests for various classes and reputations. You're too Goody two shoes or Scum? Some People won't talk to you not to mention giving you quests. As for Magic Casters who will have to conserve their strong spells I am fine with too, it will force you to construct your party with enough Warriors, Rangers and Rogues to get by and not to treat magic as crutch and/or easy I win button. Seen Gandalf treating Magic as something Trivial? in Mature setting it should be mysterius and dangerous tool to use.

 

[Cynic]

LOOK AT ALL THESE PROGRAMMING SOLUTIONS TO DESIGN PROBLEMS I CAME UP WITH...

Wait what? What's that? Can you please PLEASE point me to the programming solutions I came up with? Please I want to know the class and method names that I mentioned, or the code that I wrote because I can't find it anywhere. Since you said this and you claim to NOT be a totally retarded dumbfuck, they must exist. Please show them to me.

I am just telling you that you don't understand basic, rudimentary things and therefore shouldn't be talking like you do. It's the truth and you've proved it yourself multiple times over. In fact everything I mentioned was a design based solution. Of course, designs are implemented through programming so they aren't completely separate things.

I'm pretty bored now. Let me just say that I believe that the "problems" Sawyer is trying to solve are definitely not issues that should result in a system being abandoned. I FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with this assertion. As I said before, the Vancian system is a GREAT system with some excellent inherit benefits, and it should NOT be discarded simply because some aspects of it can be tedious. The tedium can be solved. Once you lose the tension in the game, that can't be solved, it's gone.

All the things I mentioned fix everything Sawyer has a problem with. I wrote them fast (like I said) so of course they could be fleshed out further, but the basics are there. Your retorts never really addressed things in any kind of depth worth responding to and included some extremely retarded things, which exposed you for what you are.

If you haven't played Dark Souls, and your obvious retardation doesn't extend from your brain to your fingers, go and play it. Its design cannot be applied directly to a cRPG but the concepts can definitely be adapted, and they are a fuck load better than ANYthing any ANY OTHER RPG developer has come up with in the past few years. They are most certainly better than anything Sawyer has mentioned so far.

Mrowak

I disagree with the points about Mages and "full potential". THEY ARE MEANT TO CONSERVE THEIR POWER. You are meant to use your melee classes to get through AS MUCH as you can without relying on your spells. IT IS A PARTY BASED GAME! Mages are NOT meant to be automatic infinite machine guns of destruction. It ruins the class to make them like this. It eats its way into encounter design and possible strategies. It just fucks everything up. THEY ALSO BECOME INVINCIBLE LATER ON ANYWAY WHICH IS WHAT REALLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Tim Cain sadly has lost his brain and thinks they are gimped compared to fighters. What a tragedy.

As you have said though, there's a long way to go yet. Maybe their system will be okay. I think based on their past work though, the odds are clearly stacked against Obsidian being able to pull off a combat system that is decent. I hope they prove me wrong.

Bored now. Wil leave it at that.

 

[Mrowak]

Mrowak

I disagree with the points about Mages and "full potential". THEY ARE MEANT TO CONSERVE THEIR POWER. You are meant to use your melee classes to get through AS MUCH as you can without relying on your spells. IT IS A PARTY BASED GAME! Mages are NOT meant to be automatic infinite machine guns of destruction. It ruins the class to make them like this. It eats its way into encounter design and possible strategies. It just fucks everything up.

The things you are saying are perfectly valid and cool, but it's just one of many approaches to combat, and not necessarily the best one. Sure it forces you to conserve your spells, but all too often the cost is paid in encounter design whereby you get enemies that are not meant to win the fight with you (like any well designed ambush/trap should) but merely dwindle your resources (aka. trashmobs). How about system which forces you to take fullest advantage of the limited abilities you have (due to Vancian-like spell selection but no sleeping constraints)? If they could pull that off and complement it with encounters which actually pose some difficulty with both parties unleashing hell, just because they can do that without accounting for artificial consequences which all too often mean very little.

THEY ALSO BECOME INVINCIBLE LATER ON ANYWAY WHICH IS WHAT REALLY NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

Not necessarily if you you build you encounters around the revised system. As I said, if they play their cards right there's no need for trashmobs in it.

Tim Cain sadly has lost his brain and thinks they are gimped compared to fighters. What a tragedy.

You think in traditional D&D terms. This is not the only approach. Even in D&D there are loads of custom rules that override class balance one way or another and can work quite well depending on the angle GM takes and the way he designes the game. Why can't the same happen with Project Eternity?

As you have said though, there's a long way to go yet. Maybe their system will be okay. I think based on their past work though, the odds are clearly stacked against Obsidian being able to pull off a combat system that is decent. I hope they prove me wrong.

Well, you are not the only one doubtful in their abilities, I can say that.

 

[Roguey]

LOOK AT ALL THESE PROGRAMMING SOLUTIONS TO DESIGN PROBLEMS I CAME UP WITH...

Wait what? What's that? Can you please PLEASE point me to the programming solutions I came up with?

Cannot detect sarcasm, utterly hopeless. Man, what is with these insane autistic programmers who think they have all the answers? Cleve, Knotanalt, now Cynic...

Go back to playing the shitty character you made in Fallout, poseur.

 

[Cynic]

Mrowak but aren't you essentially saying that because it is easy to default to using trash mobs when designing encounters, then an alternate system needs to be thought up? Isn't that a bit backwards? Also the game in recent memory that abandoned the Vancian system had some of the MOST annoying trash mobs in it (DERP ROADS I AM LOOKING AT YOU).

Look at ToEE and just examine the game up until the Moathouse. Include the giant and his bear and the frogs. Forget everything after that. Each fight was well designed for low level parties. All of them winnable, but many of them quite challenging as well. All that needs to happen is to continue that same kind of encounter design throughout the game.

Co8 had some good ones, Hickory Branch was really excellent. I mean I REALLY enjoyed this addition and I think it is the best piece of new content that has been added. It also had an event based change dependent on whether you left the location and returned once finding the secret lair. It was fucking awesome. The slavers were also a very tough battle, which was winnable, but hard. These are examples of mid to high level encounters that are definitely NOT trash and encourage you to think about, plan and exercise strategy. The point is it's doable and MODDERS DID FIX IT. These aren't people who are (to my knowledge) employed at major game studios, just bros who have done it in their spare time.

Like you said I do think in D&D terms (it's hard not to when the classes of the game are almost a carbon copy of D&D but anyway) and yes it's not the only approach, but isn't it easier and a more guaranteed success than saying "Nah we're gonna do it all ourselves from scratch. We've never designed a good combat system before but heck we sure as hell think we can now!".

I'm not saying IT WILL BE SHIT GUIZE 100% GUARANTEED. All I am saying is that the arguments put forward against the other way of doing things seem VERY thin, and VERY suspect. It really leans towards just justifying dumbing shit down.

Really, I'm hoping the game will be good and their combat system works out. Honestly I am.

 

[Mrowak]

Mrowak but aren't you essentially saying that because it is easy to default to using trash mobs when designing encounters, then an alternate system needs to be thought up? Isn't that a bit backwards? Also the game in recent memory that abandoned the Vancian system had some of the MOST annoying trash mobs in it (DERP ROADS I AM LOOKING AT YOU).

Look at ToEE and just examine the game up until the Moathouse. Include the giant and his bear and the frogs. Forget everything after that. Each fight was well designed for low level parties. All of them winnable, but many of them quite challenging as well. All that needs to happen is to continue that same kind of encounter design throughout the game.

Co8 had some good ones, Hickory Branch was really excellent. I mean I REALLY enjoyed this addition and I think it is the best piece of new content that has been added. It also had an event based change dependent on whether you left the location and returned once finding the secret lair. It was fucking awesome. The slavers were also a very tough battle, which was winnable, but hard. These are examples of mid to high level encounters that are definitely NOT trash and encourage you to think about, plan and exercise strategy. The point is it's doable and MODDERS DID FIX IT. These aren't people who are (to my knowledge) employed at major game studios, just bros who have done it in their spare time.

Like you said I do think in D&D terms (it's hard not to when the classes of the game are almost a carbon copy of D&D but anyway) and yes it's not the only approach, but isn't it easier and a more guaranteed success than saying "Nah we're gonna do it all ourselves from scratch. We've never designed a good combat system before but heck we sure as hell think we can now!".

I'm not saying IT WILL BE SHIT GUIZE 100% GUARANTEED. All I am saying is that the arguments put forward against the other way of doing things seem VERY thin, and VERY suspect. It really leans towards just justifying dumbing shit down.

Really, I'm hoping the game will be good and their combat system works out. Honestly I am.

It's all fine what you are stating but it follows the logic: "I liked X. They are not doing X, but X-Y+Z. Because of that they are bound to fail." There's no proof that X-Y+Z cannot work well, but because it is different from X (which wasn't that popular in cRPGs to begin with) it's bad from the get-go.

Like you said I do think in D&D terms (it's hard not to when the classes of the game are almost a carbon copy of D&D but anyway) and yes it's not the only approach, but isn't it easier and a more guaranteed success than saying "Nah we're gonna do it all ourselves from scratch. We've never designed a good combat system before but heck we sure as hell think we can now!".

The success is not guaranteed at all. Hell, even if they implemented just X combat it also could be a failure from all sorts of other reasons than mechanical combat system considerations. Look and original NWN2 and MotB - that pretty much sucked balls combatwise, in spite of Vancian system. Even if you implemnted TB, it wouldn't change much - such a clusterfuck it was.

They claim that they were not free to follow their own vision and forced to abide artificial PnP constraints which made their combat suck. Now they have free hand. Ok, fair enough - so let's see what they can do with it their properitary ideas.

Also, I liked the fights at Hickory Branch, but I don't thinks those encounters were viable without sleeping - especially the final one. It did work well, for the most part, but it doesn't mean it cannot work differently or better.

Now because this is Obsidian we are talking about I am not certain if they can pull off any decent combat system, regardless of the fact that it is X-Y+Z, just X, just Y or whatever.They do not have a good track record, in this respect.