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

[FeelTheRads]

For many players, getting sacked by a Disintegrate effect simply means a reload and a metagame revision of their prepped defenses.

Or it means learn the fucking game and create a good party than can face different challenges.
Yes, you will still sometimes have to reload, boo-fucking-hoo, such a horrible thing.

 

[Sensuki]

Now for something interesting.

Or not.

 

[BBMorti]

Walking around the corner and having two people petrified by a basil sounds more like a scouting issue (Stealthy thief or invisible anyone), than a design issue, to me. In a group with no mage to cast protection from petrification, there are potions that offer the same effect, skeleton summons that are immune etc. I do understand his argument about hard counters, but I worry what it will mean to the game when he wants to avoid 'too much unnecessary reloading' or what it is he is on about.

If all situations should be salvageable by a guy derping some fighter around a corner without a second thought, it can't be the most brutal situations that await.

 

[Roguey]

Celebrating all 8s with

i've been working in the game industry for 15 years and wouldn't identify myself as a design expert.

nor would anyone who's played the games i've worked on mmm oh oh hahaha!

 

[Nihiliste]

Fair enough - though my post might seem otherwise, I don't really care that much about it anyway. Mods for all!

Now for something interesting.

I'll never understand why Josh is so adamant about having people play his games a certain way.

I do agree about not necessarily including things that make a fight trivial (cloak of mirroring for beholders, protection from undead for Kangaxx). But not including deadly creatures and spells that can kill or incapacitate you with ease seems like an odd decision just to prevent people from reloading. Those kinds of creatures make sense in a fantasy world featuring a lot of magic usage. Even given the limitation that people can reload on a computer, is it really worth taking out the roleplaying and narrative and world lore possibilities of including such things just to discourage people from saving/reloading? Smells like aspergers to me.

 

[Infinitron]

Fair enough - though my post might seem otherwise, I don't really care that much about it anyway. Mods for all!

Now for something interesting.

I'll never understand why Josh is so adamant about having people play his games a certain way.

I do agree about not necessarily including things that make a fight trivial (cloak of mirroring for beholders, protection from undead for Kangaxx). But not including deadly creatures and spells that can kill or incapacitate you with ease seems like an odd decision just to prevent people from reloading. Those kinds of creatures make sense in a fantasy world featuring a lot of magic usage. Even given the limitation that people can reload on a computer, is it really worth taking out the roleplaying and narrative and world lore possibilities of including such things just to discourage people from saving/reloading? Smells like aspergers to me.

You can replace permadeath effects with an equivalent temporary incapacitation.

Permanently turned to stone? "Aaah fuck it, reloading. That never happened."

Turned to stone for two minutes? "Yeah, maybe I can still beat this, let's not reload. I'll try to survive and then get my guy back afterwards."

And so by making individual enemy attacks less punishing, the battle as a whole actually becomes harder.

 

[FeelTheRads]

And so by making individual enemy attacks less punishing, the battle as a whole actually becomes harder.

Or you just reload until you don't get your guy turned to stone at all and the combat is easier than easy.

If you save scum, you save scum. And save scumming is even more scummy if you do it when you don't actually die but are only incapacitated.

In my opinion, Sawyer promotes the worst kind of save scumming.

 

[Xeon]

I liked the warning you get before you encounter Basilisks like the stone statues in one of the eastern maps and in the cave under the library as a warning IIRC or some of the warnings you get from NPCs. But the Kobolds and Skeletons for example appearing out of no where when fighting the first boss in the first iron mine of BG1, I don't like those kind of encounters.

 

[Infinitron]

Keep in mind that in terms of lore, you could still say that a basilisk turns people into stone "permanently".

When you kill an enemy in an RPG, that enemy is generally gone for good. He can't be resurrected and he rarely even gets healed. Yet your characters can be resurrected or healed back from the brink of death, and they do so often.

This is an abstraction that RPG players have come to accept. We do not understand from this convention that "people cannot die in the Forgotten Realms". Death is still a serious matter in the setting.

The same can be true for petrification and other incapacitating states. They exist, but they're something that heroes just sort of "recover from".

And so by making individual enemy attacks less punishing, the battle as a whole actually becomes harder.

Or you just reload until you don't get your guy turned to stone at all and the combat is easier that easy.

That's why you also limit randomization so he almost always will if he doesn't have high enough stats.

 

[FeelTheRads]

That's why you also limit everything and make a boring game

Fixed.

 

[Sensuki]

The focus is on making the game playable by scrubs / 'blame the game' / giveupgamer people. For some reason one thing that seems to frustrate JES to no end is when people stop playing/give up on his games. So you know expect critical path content to be pretty tame difficulty wise and don't expect to see many 'stun' effects in the game (That actually incapacitate a character for a period of time).

 

[Infinitron]

don't expect to see many 'stun' effects in the game (That actually incapacitate a character for a period of time).

I don't see how that follows.

 

[Abelian]

I'll never understand why Josh is so adamant about having people play his games a certain way.

It seems to me that "a certain way" means "a way that allows players multiple ways", since he places so much emphasis on making all build viable and multiple quest/conversation resolutions.

 

[Hormalakh]

No I read it completely differently. What I understood is that Josh wants to make those sorts of spells actually require a strategy outside of "reload." If you have to re-roll for petrification for 3 rounds straight until it becomes permanent, you now have a choice: do you risk the rerolls for your party member and hope to roll out of the petrification, or do you use a turn with a mage to cast "protection from petrification"? That becomes a choice and a more interesting one than "ok well i'm one down, either I try to fight throu- shit they hit my petrified guy and he shattered to pieces. Reload."

It's the same with Kangaxx and the imprison spell. If you get your PC imprisoned, there's basically nothing you can do to stop that. There's no strategy involved - it's just luck.

Feeltherads thinks it's boring, but to me that allows more choices in battle and more options. Sure there's nothing that's "uber-powerful" that can one-shot you. But a one-shot is, for the most part, just another step between reloading for most people.

 

[Delterius]

Keep in mind that in terms of lore, you could still say that a basilisk turns people into stone "permanently".

No nononoonnnononnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Seriously, don't ever think about doing this deliberately. If you want your adventurers predicaments with a basilisk's gaze to be an entirely survivable circumstance then justify this somehow. Because baby steps is the beginning of every marathon racer and gameplay/story segregation is a rabbit hole that won't ever end. Its okay if it happens from time to time, but don't treat this as a tool of storytelling because it isn't.

 

[Hormalakh]

It would make more sense to say that "outside of a stone to flesh spell" a petrification takes time to happen. The character turns to stone slowly (multiple rounds/turns/rolls) if he is unable to break from the spell.

 

[Athelas]

A petrification automatically ceases if the person/monster that inflicted is killed?

 

[Delterius]

A petrification automatically ceases if the person/monster that inflicted is killed?

Really, just anything that reflects what you want into both the story and the mechanics. Ultimately, you can't refer to an ability in an absolutely terrifying way and then decide that you don't want to inconvenience the players too much. If you want to turn the Stone's Gaze into a survivable circumstance, you must alter both the story and the game mechanic.

Maybe there's also a time limit to kill the basilisk before the petrification takes a hold of the person's body and becomes permanent. Maybe there's a cumulative Health damage to being in a petrified stage. Just anything other than taking the first steps into becoming Blizzard Entertainment.

 

[Infinitron]

A petrification automatically ceases if the person/monster that inflicted is killed?

Really, just anything that reflects what you want into both the story and the mechanics. Ultimately, you can't refer to an ability in an absolutely terrifying way and then decide that you don't want to inconvenience the players too much. If you want to turn the Stone's Gaze into a survivable circumstance, you must alter both the story and the game mechanic.

Maybe there's also a time limit to kill the basilisk before the petrification takes a hold of the person's body and becomes permanent. Maybe there's a cumulative Health damage to being in a petrified stage. Just anything other than taking the first steps into becoming Blizzard Entertainment.

OK, I sympathize, but I trust you feel the same way about health regen and the fact that adventurers all have the unique ability to "wake up" after being killed in most post-2000s RPGs

 

[Delterius]

A petrification automatically ceases if the person/monster that inflicted is killed?

Really, just anything that reflects what you want into both the story and the mechanics. Ultimately, you can't refer to an ability in an absolutely terrifying way and then decide that you don't want to inconvenience the players too much. If you want to turn the Stone's Gaze into a survivable circumstance, you must alter both the story and the game mechanic.

Maybe there's also a time limit to kill the basilisk before the petrification takes a hold of the person's body and becomes permanent. Maybe there's a cumulative Health damage to being in a petrified stage. Just anything other than taking the first steps into becoming Blizzard Entertainment.

OK, I sympathize, but I trust you feel the same way about health regen and the fact that adventurers all have the unique ability to "wake up" after being killed in most post-2000s RPGs

The simple exception here is that there's no expectation to turn every game into PS:T. But if some NPC tells me that a Basilisk's gaze is fatal then I sort of expect it to be. Not a 2 min debuff that is reminiscent of LoL.

EDIT: and as I said its okay that gameplay and story segregation happen sometimes. But taking it for granted is awful.

 

[Hormalakh]

I do want to say one last thing about this design decision: Chris Avellone's masterpiece, PS:T, tried to do the same thing with death. His initial concern with making TNO unkillable was tropes that he had dealt with in DnD games of the past. What grew out of his frustrations became the story for PS:T. Naysayers should remember that.

I kind of looked at all the RPGs I had played up to that point, and identified all the things I was tired of seeing in those RPGs, and just looked for new ways to get around them. It just seemed like loading your game up after death was a huge waste of time. Ideally you just want the player to play until they feel like quitting, and so it occurred to me that if I made an immortal character, and made death a part of the game and mechanics, that it would be a more enjoyable experience for players instead of the standard save, die, and reload. I thought it would also be kinda cool if there were instances where dying allowed you to solve certain puzzles. I was also sick of seeing elves and dwarves and all of the standard fantasy races, and thought: "Aren't people ready for something new?" And this just seemed to be a good platform to explore the so many other good options out there for people to latch onto.

OK, I sympathize, but I trust you feel the same way about health regen and the fact that adventurers all have the unique ability to "wake up" after being killed in most post-2000s RPGs

Except I take the "Expert mode" of PoE to be the canon, and in that game mode, death is permanent. Or do you mean something else?

 

[Athelas]

Yeah, when people criticize the Arcanum LP, they should remember the only reason we got PS:T is because MCA is so terrible at games that he set out to make an RPG where it's impossible to die.

 

[Infinitron]

Except I take the "Expert mode" of PoE to be the canon, and in that game mode, death is permanent. Or do you mean something else?

I'm not referring to that. I was making an analogy to the idea of adventurers in PoE having the ability to "shake off" petrification and other status effects which are permanent for mundane characters.

 

[Rake]

A petrification automatically ceases if the person/monster that inflicted is killed?

Really, just anything that reflects what you want into both the story and the mechanics. Ultimately, you can't refer to an ability in an absolutely terrifying way and then decide that you don't want to inconvenience the players too much. If you want to turn the Stone's Gaze into a survivable circumstance, you must alter both the story and the game mechanic.

Maybe there's also a time limit to kill the basilisk before the petrification takes a hold of the person's body and becomes permanent. Maybe there's a cumulative Health damage to being in a petrified stage. Just anything other than taking the first steps into becoming Blizzard Entertainment.

OK, I sympathize, but I trust you feel the same way about health regen and the fact that adventurers all have the unique ability to "wake up" after being killed in most post-2000s RPGs

Yes, and most most post-2000s RPGs were shit, especialy in that department.
Gameplay and story segregation should never happen willingly. If it can't be avoided, alright, but it should be considered a failure on the devs part, not "well, who cares, that's how it's done"

 

[Hormalakh]

Again, I think that Sawyer isn't going in that direction. He's stated numerous times before that what's good for the geese is good for the gander. If petrification affects you that way in which you can "shake it off", it would be true for other people in the game world. Now, whether petrification (when it takes full effect) is permanent again depends on the story, though I'd expect that it wouldn't be permanent -even in D&D petrification wasn't permanent - if you had someone cast a "stone to flesh," you were good.

Really the only thing I ever understood from D&D is that nothing is permanent. Death? Resurrect. Stone? Stone-to-flesh. Lost your soul to an elf wizard? Get it back by killing him. Stuck fighting in the Blood War forever? Get some night hag to make you immortal and portal out of the Abyss. As long as you had someone else who could solve your troubles when you were in a bind - you were good to go.

Some things can be abstracted - when it comes to game mechanics for example. But if you're writing a good story, don't become an internet meme of "GAME_NAME logic".

---

the one place where Sawyer sort of did this (infinite stash and not even wanting to try to explain it), really falls flat in my opinion. He might not want to explain it, but there should be at least some sort of explanation. Abstraction for mounts? OK fine - we're going old-school, we understand not being able to animate every little thing, but at least it's got an answer.

Why did everyone shit on the pillars and adra at first (yes I went there)? Because they thought that was something he pulled out of his ass at the last minute.