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

[Roguey]

New Vegas with JSawyer is all the proof I needed.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

New Vegas as proof of systems design, hahahahaha

Spoken like someone who's never looked at JSawyer, something that was referred to as "great work" from a curmudgeon like VD.

They were two implementations of two very different systems. BG was more faithful but IWD2 gets a pass since 3.5 is much more complex.

Icewind Dale not Icewind Dale 2.

I like NV+JSawyer, but he didn't make the system from ground up. Eternity is his first attempt at creating a new system.

It's not actually his first, but it might be the first one to actually get released. And properly improving the systems of others is something, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants and so on.

 

[CappenVarra]

That's not ironic. No one expects a tank or a D&D fighter to be anywhere near the best damage dealer.

Well, I don't care about "tanks" but having the only class that pretty much spells out "hitting people until they're dead" in its name be the worst at making people dead is definitely ironic. We can spend time discussing the vagaries of history that lead to this particular point of irony, but what's the point if it doesn't make it any less ironic?

New Vegas with JSawyer is all the proof I needed. And IWD was a better D&D adaptation than BG.

when BG first came out i took xan instead of dynaheir for a while because i was going to do that siren area and i figured xan's elven + enchanter bonuses vs. sleep and charm would make it a walk in the park. lol joke's on me none of the specialist save bonuses or racial bonuses outside of ability score mods were implemented. owned.

jokes on you, you played that and said "Wow, this is a bad game with a lot of features which actually do nothing, I want to make games just like it for the rest of my career"

actually i said, "i would have implemented all of the racial and specialist bonuses!!!" and then ~ 2 yrs later i worked on icewind dale and did.

Now that's actually cool. As long as he achieves a similar level of mechanical detail in Dullsville.

 

[Blaine]

Slippery slope is a fallacy.

Not necessarily:

In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope (also known as thin end of the wedge - or sometimes "edge" in US English - or the camel's nose) is an informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom.[1] The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process which leads to the significant effect. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. Modern usage avoids the fallacy by acknowledging the possibility of this middle ground.

The warrant in this case is the decline, which is very relevant to computer game development. Nor am I arguing that slippery slope thinking will absolutely lead to a shitty end result for P:E; I'm mainly pointing out that the attitudes you're endorsing are the very same ones that, demonstrably, precipitated the decline. That is fact, and is independent of the slippery slope argument.

Also, human beings are nigh incapable of pure logic. There are more assumptions, baseless predictions, and other such intellectual tomfoolery and logical fallacies in this thread than there are grains of sand on a beach.

Furthermore he is not making these changes for a "wider" audience:

Yeah, I read that along with everyone else. It's pure feel-good PR, what people want to hear. This is the same guy who's Tweeted that a majority of gamers piss him off because they're sexist/racist/whatever.

 

[suejak]

Hahaha, I love how Sawyer's political views always come up when certain hicks post

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, I read that along with everyone else. It's pure feel-good PR, what people want to hear.

Right, he's lying about what he's actually seen his decade+ of working in the industry to make others feel good. Tinfoil sales are up.

This is the same guy who's Tweeted that a majority of gamers piss him off because they're sexist/racist/whatever.

They are.

I see nothing inaccurate in those statements.

 

[Blaine]

Right, he's lying about what he's actually seen his decade+ of working in the industry to make others feel good. Tinfoil sales are up.

Yes, well, I'm up to nearly three decades of actually playing the end products on a regular basis, and recent trends (the past decade+) suggest that the majority of gamers lately are anything but intelligent and discerning. I don't think he's lying per se, but I am suggesting that he's accentuating the positive. If he secretly did believe that most gamers were morons, he wouldn't say so publicly. Have a look at the convocation of geniuses populating the Obsidian forums and get back to me on this one.

 

[Blaine]

"Most of them are actually pretty intelligent. They like or love games. They like or love RPGs and have played a bunch of them." — Josh Sawyer, Skyrim enthusiast

"Josh Sawyer has been working in the industry for a decade+, and if he thinks design by committee is a good idea, who are you to argue?" — Roguey, Josh Sawyer enthusiast

Spoiler

I'm just funnin' ya.

 

[Brayko]

I'm pretty liberal-ish myself (Well, by American standards) but JE Sawyer comes off as ultra-idealistic and painfully intolerant to the point where you couldn't even have a good light-hearted laugh about females with dark skin and big tits.

 

[SwiftCrack]

"Most of them are actually pretty intelligent. They like or love games. They like or love RPGs and have played a bunch of them." — Josh Sawyer, Skyrim enthusiast

"Josh Sawyer has been working in the industry for a decade+, and if he thinks design by committee is a good idea, who are you to argue?" — Roguey, Josh Sawyer enthusiast

Spoiler

I'm just funnin' ya.

Could you imagine though .

 

[Raapys]

I see nothing inaccurate in those statements.

It does make him look kinda strange for actually caring about it though.

 

[suejak]

Sure is strange to care about the world when we have so many elves to fuck.

 

[Raapys]

Sure is strange to care about the world when we have so many elves to fuck.

Well, few things are more distasteful than morally superior sufferers of white knight syndrome. Developers already make enough characters of that archtype in their games, they don't need to take the role themselves.

 

[suejak]

Yeah, you wouldn't want a bunch of escapist nerds thinking you're obnoxious for talking about real-world injustices on your personal Twitter.

 

[Raapys]

Well, he must obviously care what they think, or he wouldn't be twittering in the first place.

edit: Ah, I thought it was work-place twitter. Oh well.

 

[Harold]

All of your ideas discourage picking up everything, which is contrary to what most players actually want to do (pick up everything and sell it). Josh Sawyer doesn't want to work contrary to human behavior;

Then care to ask your pretend-boyfriend why he cut carry weight down by 100 in his NV mod? Or is he going to add a magical, non-accesible outside of player home, infinite stash in his next release version because he recently saw the light and thinks lootwhoring (a 'degenerate' behaviour btw) is the shit?

 

[FeelTheRads]

(a 'degenerate' behaviour btw)

Ah, but it's not "degenerate" if Sawyer KNOWS people like it. It's only "degenerate" if people play a certain way that Sawyer KNOWS they don't like.

 

[roshan]

Teh Sawyer has confirmed, no level scaling.


source: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63017-level-scaling-and-its-misuse/page__st__160#entry1297921

In what fucking world is this "no level scaling"? Fuck this bullshit dumbed down crap.

 

[Infinitron]

All of your ideas discourage picking up everything, which is contrary to what most players actually want to do (pick up everything and sell it). Josh Sawyer doesn't want to work contrary to human behavior;

Then care to ask your pretend-boyfriend why he cut carry weight down by 100 in his NV mod? Or is he going to add a magical, non-accesible outside of player home, infinite stash in his next release version because he recently saw the light and thinks lootwhoring (a 'degenerate' behaviour btw) is the shit?

To be fair, that's a hardcore mod. It's not for everybody. I doubt he expects every player to want to play like that.

 

[Hormalakh]

I'm thinking we need a new thread called "Josh Sawyer and his political ideology" and we should put it in GD. I really don't see how his game mechanics are influenced by his ideologies. His content creation, I will grant, might be influenced by it. But game mechanics probably won't.

I did have a question after reading this "conversation." Isn't there an inherent difference between frustration in a game and complexity/difficulty, though? I understand that sometimes frustration can be a byproduct of complexity/difficulty, but generally speaking, frustration just for frustration's sake isn't really a good thing. If Josh Sawyer can maintain complexity/difficulty while reducing unneccessary frustration, isn't that a good thing?

When I talk about frustration, I'm talking about just obnoxious frustration. Like imagine if BG2 required you to play "QWOP" to move your party from point A to point B. Some people might say "that's awesome!" But after the first 5 minutes such a game would become quite frustrating to play because it doesn't really add much value to gameplay.

Point being, reducing frustration isn't always a bad thing if gameplay and complexity/difficulty is maintained. I believe that most of his design choices reflect this philosophy instead of "Push A for Awesome!"

 

[roshan]

Seriously, you guys. Why not worry about whether Project Eternity will have an equivalent of Firkraag or the Twisted Rune battles, or an awesome dungeon on par with Dragon's Eye or the Severed Hand?

These are the things that make games awesome. These are the things that people remember.

Instead we have a thread with 200 pages of people raging over health and inventory mechanics. Unbelievable.

Because Dragon's Eye would have been so much better if Yxumomei scaled to your level and your character's autoresurrected after the battle with her.

 

[Infinitron]

Because Dragon's Eye would have been so much better if Yxumomei scaled to your level and your character's autoresurrected after the battle with her.

Let's play devil's advocate:

1) What does it matter what level she is, as long as the fight is challenging? Typically, bosses have special abilities and allies, and this is what makes them difficult to overcome. Their "level" is not that important.

2) Who cares if you autoresurrect? You're gonna cast resurrect yourself anyway as soon as you get back to town. The dungeon is over at that point.

You see, roshan, where you see "difficulty", others just see meaningless details and busy-work.

 

[FeelTheRads]

2) Who cares if you autoresurrect? You're gonna cast resurrect yourself anyway as soon as you get to town, or right there in the dungeon if you have an appropriately high level cleric. The dungeon is over at that point.

Who cares if you autoregen? You're gonna cast heal on yourself anyway. Who cares if you don't die? You're gonna cast load game anyway.

This is not devil's advocate. It's next-gen rhetoric.

 

[Infinitron]

Who cares if you autoregen? You're gonna cast heal on yourself anyway.

Yes, that's the reason for the stamina mechanic.

Who cares if you die? You're gonna cast load game anyway.

Funny, but that doesn't follow. If you can't die, there's no way to fail at the game at all. That's not reduction of busy-work, it's crippling the game itself.

 

[Harold]

All of your ideas discourage picking up everything, which is contrary to what most players actually want to do (pick up everything and sell it). Josh Sawyer doesn't want to work contrary to human behavior;

Then care to ask your pretend-boyfriend why he cut carry weight down by 100 in his NV mod? Or is he going to add a magical, non-accesible outside of player home, infinite stash in his next release version because he recently saw the light and thinks lootwhoring (a 'degenerate' behaviour btw) is the shit?

To be fair, that's a hardcore mod. It's not for everybody. I doubt he expects every player to want to play like that.

So you're saying PE's core design is more set to please traditional Fallout 3 players?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Most fun i had in an RPG was in PST, and you were an immortal that steamrolled through every encounter with minimal difficulty.

On the other hand, look at BG2, running back to a temple to ressurect party members, or using a scroll/wand, running back to a merchant to sell loot, resting, drinking potions or using spells to regen HP´s... Did you guys seriously think of them as features? They are nothing more than tedious game time padding.

Story, character, actual combat encounters... those are features, those are what you will remember 20 years from now while discussing a great RPG...