Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

Can't have a contingency that doesn't encourage metagaming.

Can't have a "grimoire-based" spellcasting system that doesn't encourage metagaming either. Oh, wait.

Once you have those grimoires, the contigencies are just a utility to cast the spells they contain faster. You could even have a dedicated type of "contigency grimoire" in the game that fires all of its spells as soon as an enemy is sighted or something. It would have less capacity than a regular grimoire.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Man, I don't know. Like I said its probably because of my inexperience but getting stuck in spiderweb pretty much annihilates most of my party members if I don't have free movement spell/item or be extra careful for example. Or if I am up against mages, some of them are pretty much immune to mele damage and I think I needed a specific spell to break their shield so I can damage them or kite them until it wears off and hope a fireball doesn't hit me or something like that.

If you have 6 party members, chances are atleast one of them will make a save against web. Regarding mage enemies, they're usually only temporary immune to melee damage through some spells you can hit through (stoneskin, mirror image and such) or bypass in some other ways (switch to normal weapons if mage is using PFMW, use high enchanted weapons against absolute immunity if available though it only lasts a few rounds). Sure, it's easier to just cast breach with your mage but it's far from being the only solution.

 

[Roguey]

Yah, in PoE you're limited by what you can cast by what you have stored in your grimoire, but it's not like "fill up your grimoire with five fireballs" just the one and you can cast it as many times as your level allows.

Once you have those grimoires, the contigencies are just a utility to cast the spells they contain faster. You could even have a dedicated "contigency grimoire" that fires all of its spells as soon as an enemy is sighted or something. It would have less capacity than a regular grimoire.

Sounds like a degenerate, obvious routine thing to do, which he hates.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

This thread is fucked. Many posts in this thread begins with "Josh Sawyer says", or "accoring to Josh", or people quoting themselves quoting Josh, or using a quote from Josh in some false dichotomy as though this one dude's thoughts on something make alternate choices false out of hand.

What the fuck I suggest this thread be renamed to "Fellating Josh Sawyer". The level of fanaticism is rather pathetic.

 

[Infinitron]

Sounds like a degenerate, obvious routine thing to do, which he hates.

Yes, which is why you'd need to BALANCE it. By making the contigency grimoire have limited uses, for example.

No mechanic is impossible to "Sawyerize". It's just a question of design goals.

 

[Roguey]

This thread is fucked. Most posts in this thread begins with "Josh Sawyer says", or "accoring to Josh", or people quoting themselves quoting Josh, or using a quote from Josh in some false dichotomy as though this one dude's thoughts on something make alternate choices false out of hand.

What the fuck I suggest this thread be renamed to "Fellating Josh Sawyer". The level of fanaticism is rather pathetic.

He's the project director and lead designer.

Also other Obsidian employees all-but-confirmed they'll be using His Blueprint for a Nigh-Perfect RPG for their next Kickstarter project.

Yes, which is why you'd need to BALANCE it. By making the contigency grimoire have limited uses, for example.

No mechanic is impossible to "Sawyerize". It's just a question of design goals.

And we circle back to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...project-eternity.75947/page-1117#post-3130033

Note that in the quote on the last page he said "Familiars: None" whereas with sequencers, contingencies, spell protections, counter-protections, romances, and sex it was a flat-out "No" as if to say "We'd like to have familiars but no time" and "No, you can't have those things because I don't want them."

 

[Somberlain]

Most of the time my mages have a stoneskin or protection from magic weapons contingency programmed to fire up when they are "helpless" or take damage. I don't need to have any metagame knowledge of future encounters to use it that way.

 

[Infinitron]

And we circle back to http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...project-eternity.75947/page-1117#post-3130033

Saying "it just needs balance" doesn't mean that it's a good idea. Balancing skills, subsystems, systems as a whole takes a long time and a lot of effort.

I thought we'd established that we're talking about a hypothetical BG2-ish high level campaign PoE2, not PoE1. Such a game would allow more time and effort to be spent on balancing new high level systems, such as contigencies.

 

[Abelian]

One thing I liked in IWD2 was the D&D 3 feature of clerics being able to switch a spell with a healing spell of the same level. It allowed clerics to have a wider spell arsenal and made them more useful in combat. I thought it was a neat way to extend the Vancian slot-based system to be more dynamic.

 

[Roguey]

I thought we'd established that we're talking about a hypothetical BG2-ish high level campaign PoE2, not PoE1. Such a game would allow more time and effort to be spent on balancing new high level systems, such as contigencies.

A high-level PoE would be more like Heart of Winter/Trials of the Luremaster or endgame IWD2 than it would BG2 and even then not entirely since those games had their share of hard counters.

Most of the time my mages have a stoneskin or protection from magic weapons contingency programmed to fire up when they are "helpless" or take damage. I don't need to have any metagame knowledge of future encounters to use it that way.

Josh doesn't like "obvious" decisions like that. Why would anyone not put buffs like that up? If the combat situation required something else, i.e. knowledge gained from post-reload meta-knowledge.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh doesn't like "obvious" decisions like that. Why would anyone not put buffs like that up? If the combat situation required something else, i.e. knowledge gained from post-reload meta-knowledge.

Where do you draw the line between "obvious" and "high level ability that naturally supersedes a lower level ability"? What's wrong with giving high level mages a perk, the ability to insta-cast a limited number of spells in certain conditions? Does that really sound outrageously impossible to balance to you?

The queen needs no advocate

The queen is typically the most powerful piece in chess (though not the most valuable; that role is reserved for the king). The queen's movement capabilities combine the lateral movement of the rook with the diagonal movement of the bishop. Even if you are learning chess for the first time, the fact that the queen combines the movement of two other pieces makes her relative power clear. A rook's ability to perform a castle, the knight's excellence at creating forks, and a the pawn's ability to capture an enemy pawn en passant are all capabilities that take a while for players to appreciate, but not the queen's movement. The queen's value is obvious.

I don't think Josh Sawyer is suggesting that the queen be abolished from chess.

Generally speaking, the fact that "high level/late game stuff" > "low level/early game stuff" means that some degree of "obviousness" in RPGs is inevitable.

 

[J_C]

This thread is fucked. Many posts in this thread begins with "Josh Sawyer says", or "accoring to Josh", or people quoting themselves quoting Josh, or using a quote from Josh in some false dichotomy as though this one dude's thoughts on something make alternate choices false out of hand.

What the fuck I suggest this thread be renamed to "Fellating Josh Sawyer". The level of fanaticism is rather pathetic.

Yeah, Roguey pretty much circlejerks Josh in every post of his, and this goes on for pages.

 

[Abelian]

Yeah, Roguey pretty much circlejerks Josh in every post of his, and this goes on for pages.

Not to be a pendant, but that denotes a group activity.

 

[Ninjerk]

What gave you the impression that was my favorite?

Wasteland 2, my mistake.

 

[toro]

There should be a new PE thread in which Roguey is not allowed to post.

 

[BBMorti]

I can't find where I read it but Josh thinks contingencies and spell sequencers are stupid, rote, and rely too much on prescience/post-reload metagaming.

Josh can think what he wants, but what I'm saying is, if he's told to make a PoE2 with BG2-like mage abilities, he'll find a way to make it work. Just like he's doing things with PoE that he'd otherwise not do, due to IE loyalty.

You sound more and more like Roguey v.2.0

 

[tuluse]

There should be a new PE thread in which Roguey is not allowed to post.

What would that accomplish? Roguey at least makes interesting points and starts discussion. I'd much rather read her posts than FeelTheRads telling me that it shouldn't be possible to play an RPG better than another person outside of chargen.

 

[Excidium]

FeelTheRads telling me that it shouldn't be possible to play an RPG better than another person outside of chargen.

Wot

 

[tuluse]

FeelTheRads telling me that it shouldn't be possible to play an RPG better than another person outside of chargen.

Wot

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...project-eternity.75947/page-1108#post-3115775

 

[Excidium]

Vault Dweller's school of RPG design

 

[Koschey]

Yeah, Roguey pretty much circlejerks Josh in every post of his, and this goes on for pages.

Not to be a pendant, but that denotes a group activity.

Not to be a pedant, but a path of length 0, that is, a path containing only a single vertex, is a trivial circle, so Roguey can circlejerk alone.

 

[Roguey]

Where do you draw the line between "obvious" and "high level ability that naturally supersedes a lower level ability"? What's wrong with giving high level mages a perk, the ability to insta-cast a limited number of spells in certain conditions? Does that really sound outrageously impossible to balance to you?

When it's something you use all the time. He doesn't want to provide a tactic you use in all situations.

If he provides anything remotely like that, it'll be more like Seven Eyes or Aegis i.e. you won't be able to choose the spells yourself.

What gave you the impression that was my favorite?

Wasteland 2, my mistake.

Oh, you were being sarcastic. But Wasteland 2 makes less sense because it uses keywords-expanded-into-full-sentences and some of them are supposed to have a special effect?

 

[Copper]

This thread is fucked. Most posts in this thread begins with "Josh Sawyer says", or "accoring to Josh", or people quoting themselves quoting Josh, or using a quote from Josh in some false dichotomy as though this one dude's thoughts on something make alternate choices false out of hand.

What the fuck I suggest this thread be renamed to "Fellating Josh Sawyer". The level of fanaticism is rather pathetic.

He's the project director and lead designer.

Also other Obsidian employees all-but-confirmed they'll be using His Blueprint for a Nigh-Perfect RPG for their next Kickstarter project.

Sure, sure. One blueprint to rule them all, and to the Balance bind them. Focus shifts, money and scope is limited, and design needs to shift with it or leads to compromises and sub-optimal solutions. If anything, this will be the fourth 'sub-optimal' game in his own freaking opinion that Josh will be lead on. I'm sympathetic to the deadline he faced getting out IWD2, the clusterfuck the NWN2 was and his role there, the deadline with F:NV and working with Gamebryo, and the appeal to nostalgia that PoE has to bear, but that should demonstrate to everyone that a universal solution is a myth. The man deserves credit for being able to juggle creative and management shit at the same time, no doubt, but presenting him to be some sort of Randian superman who is impossible of failing is not doing anyone any favours.

 

[Ninjerk]

Where do you draw the line between "obvious" and "high level ability that naturally supersedes a lower level ability"? What's wrong with giving high level mages a perk, the ability to insta-cast a limited number of spells in certain conditions? Does that really sound outrageously impossible to balance to you?

When it's something you use all the time. He doesn't want to provide a tactic you use in all situations.

If he provides anything remotely like that, it'll be more like Seven Eyes or Aegis i.e. you won't be able to choose the spells yourself.

What gave you the impression that was my favorite?

Wasteland 2, my mistake.

Oh, you were being sarcastic. But Wasteland 2 makes less sense because it uses keywords-expanded-into-full-sentences and some of them are supposed to have a special effect?

Mentioning Wasteland 2 was only meant to be a nudge in the ribs about the SRR joke. You're putting a lot more thought into what I posted than I did. From what I remember, Dead Man's Switch had a lot of dialogue options that were really well written, but seemed to amount to very little.

 

[Infinitron]

When it's something you use all the time. He doesn't want to provide a tactic you use in all situations.

Where do you draw the line between "tactic" and "something you just do"? Mages cast spells all the time. At some point, spells of a certain level even change from per-rest to per-encounter (and maybe eventually to at-will?)

So who says that insta-casting can't become part of that at some point.