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

[Mrowak]

So the answer is still to remove rewards from killing.

Yes? That has been my answer all along.

Also: Fuck "common sense." XP doesn't make much anyway. It's a bad argument. The good argument here is that Quest XP does what we what without having many issues.

"Common sense" dictates setting consistency and system's coherence. Unless you are going for :rofl: or mundblutian campaign ignoring it even in the mechanics it undermines the entire premise of the game. Common sense is why we have all these "economy", "resource management", "stat-based vs. ability based progression" and "loot" threads.

No, mechanics are why we have those.

Because it's their function - to describe what the player can *do* in the setting and what the setting can *do* to the player.

The economy isn't fun when it's broken. Resource management is important for a fun game.

But, but why? Maybe because we crave for challenge and any kind of oversimplification against "common sense" is easily exploitable. That's why life-like economics, and minimal loot is so appealing to us.

XP is completely arbitrary, abstract meta-concept in the first place.

Well it is, both IRL and within a game.

It's a good example of why discussing so-called "realism" is warped - the realism and feeling of "immersion" happens through the abstractions, not because you make your mechanics as life-like as possible. It's basically why DraQ is so horribly wrong.

I do agree that realism by definition does not mean good gameplay. However "common sense" is not realism, it's just basic framework violating which rings all sorts of bullshit detectors - too many of those and you may as well be playing Farmvile.

For the same reason in literature Fantasy genre doesn't have to be realistic but must still stick to things common, e.g. how relationships work (on personal and global e.g. political or economic scale), how people react intellectually and emotionally, and that while after a long perilous journey you may become more experienced and stronger (character progression).

System and mechanics are to safeguard those to provide framework for doing stuff in the gameworld. Therefore having experience system that cannot be easily abused is a merit.

And yeah, you can abstract things, but in PnP at least there's DM who won't let bullshit fly when it becomes overwhelming.

 

[Grunker]

Because it's their function

No, there function is to make me have fun.

I don't disagree that we generally maybe sort of like life-like mechanics, but that's only as long as they don't compete with their ability to function and make a game fun. As such the line of question goes like this:

1) What makes this mechanic fun/good/solve a problem we have?

2) OK, can we do that in a manner that better mimics reality?

If the alternative you gather from 2) causes the slightest problem for 1) and you still pick it, you're probably doing it wrong.

 

[Harold]

That was exactly my point in reply to raw. There would be no need for magical stash if you didn't find shit loot all over the place, which is the case with most RPGs: you find dozens of +1 swords or equivalent, then dozens of +2 and so on. This whole lootwhoring trend needs to die or just stay in hack&slashers and MMOs where it belongs.

Wait, wait, wait, if I remember correctly, I also told you that P:E is a dungeon crawler. I am not saying that it is impossible to build an RPG with "slim-loot^tm" but OE is making P:E and not Bloodlines 2.

The fact that it places emphasis on combat doesn't make it a dungeon crawler.

 

[Kane]

That was exactly my point in reply to raw. There would be no need for magical stash if you didn't find shit loot all over the place, which is the case with most RPGs: you find dozens of +1 swords or equivalent, then dozens of +2 and so on. This whole lootwhoring trend needs to die or just stay in hack&slashers and MMOs where it belongs.

Wait, wait, wait, if I remember correctly, I also told you that P:E is a dungeon crawler. I am not saying that it is impossible to build an RPG with "slim-loot^tm" but OE is making P:E and not Bloodlines 2.

The fact that it places emphasis on combat doesn't make it a dungeon crawler.

No, but Josh himself said that P:E is a dungeon crawler. (Or to be more precise he said that it is what he always wanted his dungeon crawler experience to be like)

 

[Hormalakh]

It would be nice if the XP/loot discussion was a little more informed with what Sawyer has already said.

Loot in IE games (and PE games) is typically hand-placed with very little randomization involved. I.e., it is not systemic. Some loot is in containers, some loot is given as quest rewards, and some loot is on creatures. Not all creatures carry loot. In Temple of Elemental Evil, on the fourth level of the temple, there's a massive fight before a room containing treasure chests with molds/jellies/puddings. You don't have to actually do the massive fight to get to the treasure chests (and if you're sneaky enough, you don't have to fight the critters near the chests). However, Hedrack, the high priest, carries several nice items. If you want to get those items, you have to weigh your own personal material cost to get through the fight against what you will get out of it. The important thing is that there's a decision to make. In terms of gaining loot, it's not a no-brainer.

Hacking terminals in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is pure benefit. Killing every hostile creature you detect in Icewind Dale is pure benefit. You always get something out of it and you are implicitly short-changing yourself when you pass up an opportunity to do so, even when you don't particularly want to do it for any other reason. That's because the rewards are systemic, universal to how the game works. You can systemically micro-reward every action the player performs and attempt to balance all of these things relative to each other, or you can back the systemic rewards out to something that is less specific, more abstract, and easier to balance overall. For us, quests are pure benefit. Completing objectives within quests are pure benefit. At a high level, pursuing objectives and completing quests comprise a huge amount of what you're focused on doing in the IE games (and will in PE as well).

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63017-level-scaling-and-its-misuse/page__st__260#entry1298679

Oh, ok. So you're going to punish players who make pacifist choices, because they will receive less cash and loot to sell.

No. Awarding loot is not systemic.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63017-level-scaling-and-its-misuse/page__st__240#entry1298627

This is all good in my opinion because it really shines the light on combat. If combat sucks, XP won't be there to pacify the rage. If combat is fun, people will engage in combat anyway. Without the glittering eyes of XP clouding everyone's judgement, we can see if combat is a boring slog or a fun experience. Also: degeneracy argument.

 

[Harold]

(Or to be more precise he said that it is what he always wanted his dungeon crawler experience to be like)

M:

Loot in IE games (and PE games) is typically hand-placed with very little randomization involved. I.e., it is not systemic.

Is he going senile? Most of the loot in both IWD games came from randomised loot tables.

 

[DraQ]

Well, if I use your argumentation, then side quests are also non-sensical.

The shitty ones where you have to kill the rats in someone's cellar or bring someone 20 wolf asses for no actual reward but some XP? Tasks no sane adventurer would actually bother with in universe? Absolutely.


Optional quests that do provide tangible rewards, however, could be in.

There are some exceptions to the former:
-auxiliary quests, where you can accomplish some shitty and unrewarding quest at no additional effort while doing something more important - deliver a letter/package, while going to another city for some other reason; find someone's stolen family heirloom ring while purging an MQ dungeon of bandits.
-quests that may not be rewarding or obligatory, but can be considered important matter (help, bandits murdered my family, but I'm too poor to give you anything for your risk and effort). They still should rather not reward you unconditionally, meaning overall cost (whatever it might be) should exceed absolute total value of whatever rewards player can expect, because otherwise everyone qualified would become a non-profit scourge of the wicked. Game should allow you to do the right stuff even at net loss, but to make it actually matter, the net loss should stay net loss.
-low level guild quests where you're forced to do menial work in exchange for opportunities to rise in status.
-chores you perform exclusively for monetary rewards if the economy isn't completely broken somehow.
-if your quest system involves some representation of opportunity cost for every quest you can very well have a lot of unrewarding shitty filler for the sole purpose of kicking hopeless completionists and people too dumb to discern worthwhile quests in the arse.

Still, the quests with sole purpose of wasting my fucking time should not be included just like encounters and systems with sole purpose of wasting my fucking time should not be included.

Kill xp also does not mean that you will kill everything, just like you will not kill everything for loot. You have the choice to do so and will only do it if you want to or need to.

The choice between reward and lack of reward, with no strings attached, is not a choice.

If I make a druid in BG and optimal way to play this druid includes going out of my way to find and slaughter bears and other wildlife for XP and XP alone, then something is fucking wrong with this game.

Removing choice

Which isn't choice.

to just making combat redundant is not a good idea in combat based game in my opinion.

How thoughtful of you to have italicized the main fallacy yourself.

RPGs are not inherently combat based games.
RPGs are not ideally combat based games.
If you're making an RPG and treating it as combat focused game you're essentially making a H&S/FPS/crawler/tactical game, except inferior, because you keep blowing your funds on shit completely unrelated to central mechanics.
In other words - you're doing it wrong.

The core part of a proper RPG is that it concentrates on what given player character can and cannot do, as opposed by all the other player characters in the same game, and gives player options to decide what they want to attempt. This means that no individual conflict resolution subsystem should be the focus of an RPG but rather their interplay, filtered by the capabilities of player character/party and player's choice.

This also means that going for combat XP or any other activity-based XP in an XP based system is plain fucking wrong, because it shifts the focus of the game to something which it wasn't build around of and relegates other conflict resolution mechanics to the rank of monument to resources wasted during development.

Removing combat XP doesn't rob combat players of anything. If you complete the quest using combat, quest XP is your combat XP. If you complete it using diplomacy, quest XP is your diplomacy XP. If you complete it via stealth, quest XP is your stealth XP. If you complete it by cleverly employing emergent mechanics via crazy, but entirely logical in hindsight use of rope, barrel of pitch and two midgets, that wasn't actually foreseen by the devs but nevertheless isn't a bug or exploit then quest XP is your creativity XP.

Why should combat characters get additional XP for adequate use of their favoured mechanics, but not the others?

Finally, it doesn't make combat "redundant". If your character can't do anything but fight, then you won't have any other choice. If your character is and excellent sneak, but couldn't fight his way out of wet paper bag, then combat will be a non-option for them, because it will only get them killed. Various solutions may give varying material or systemic rewards in various quests, for example there might be quests where sneaking make you miss out on some potential rewards, but there might be ones where it's combat that works the worst. Typically there should be more than one solution realistic for given character, but not all kinds of solutions should be always available, so overspecialization would be penalized and just going through game mindlessly repeating *sneaksneaksneak* or *fightfightfight* when confronted with an obstacle should get you nowhere (actually somewhere, with this somewhere being an early grave).

Oh, and not only should there be no action XP in an XP based system, but the XP gains should not be results of every quest. Only quests or mutually exclusive sets of quests that every player character should be realistically interested in doing should result in XP rewards. This means that game's critical path can give XP rewards, mutually exclusive quests of which at least one should be desirable by any character can give XP rewards and neutral quests can do too, but not quests like "set orphanage on fire for teh evulz" or "give at least 10 mercy blowjobs to the lepers while saving kittens".

 

[Kane]

It would be nice if the XP/loot discussion was a little more informed with what Sawyer has already said.

He also said somewhere that P:E will have loads of loot. People who are expecting Bloodlines 2 or PS:T 2 won't get what they want. What he ment by systemic is not that P:E will suddenly be a survival RPG but you won't get loot drop X by slaying monster type Y2 but a little more random. You won't be killing mobs for certain loot, but you will still get loot.

 

[Hormalakh]

He also said somewhere that P:E will have loads of loot. People who are expecting Bloodlines 2 or PS:T 2 won't get what they want. What he ment by systemic is not that P:E will suddenly be a survival RPG but you won't get loot drop X by slaying monster type Y2 but a little more random. You won't be killing mobs for certain loot, but you will still get loot.

Having loads of loot doesn't mean that most loot will be connected to killing an enemy. Some will. Not all.

Removing combat XP doesn't rob combat players of anything. If you complete the quest using combat, quest XP is your combat XP. If you complete it using diplomacy, quest XP is your diplomacy XP. If you complete it via stealth, quest XP is your stealth XP. If you complete it by cleverly employing emergent mechanics via crazy, but entirely logical in hindsight use of rope, barrel of pitch and two midgets, that wasn't actually foreseen by the devs but nevertheless isn't a bug or exploit then quest XP is your creativity XP.

Why should combat characters get additional XP for adequate use of their favoured mechanics, but not the others?

This is exactly my line of thought on the matter.

 

[imweasel]

Hormalakh Yeah, those who kill and receive combat loot will of course have more cash, but it probably won't be substantially more than someone who only sneaks around, so the difference will be neglectable.

Combat in PE will only be for fun and to clear obstacles that you can't sneak past, you can of course ignore the rest. Since you can sneak past most enemies, you will hardly be in combat anyway, unless you actually like nonsensical combat (nonsensical combat is bad, just ask DraQ).

The phun in PE comes from sneaking around and opening treasure chests full of shiny armor and weapons.

 

[Kane]

The phun in PE comes from sneaking around and opening treasure chests full of shiny armor and weapons.

^what i was talking about (i hope)

 

[Mrowak]

Because it's their function

No, there function is to make me have fun.

True. But the fun in an RPG has to be put in a context. "Why is it fun?" is the qustion here. I am not talking in the realism in the usual sense of the word, e,g, that you absolutely must reflect complex economic matrixes to have a realistic economy model or that you require bazillion stats to describe each permutation of a combat behaviour. Such realism is unnecessary, whether you write a book, make a movie or develop a game.

I am arguing for something much more basic, I lack the word for - the kind of thing that changes mindless grind in a pixelated dungeon into a heroic battle with a dragon and his minions. Such "realism" dictates the "why" of the mechanics - why they are there. Why to even bother with any kind of economy? Why to think of loot? Why to vary classes and skills between them? Why to even bother putting the mechanics in place? Without this "common sense" world-building factor any mechanics are just pointless.

Only once we establish what we want to potray can we proceed to the "how" - how to make those mechanics fun.

I don't disagree that we generally maybe sort of like life-like mechanics, but that's only as long as they don't compete with their ability to function and make a game fun. As such the line of question goes like this:

1) What makes this mechanic fun/good/solve a problem we have?

2) OK, can we do that in a manner that better mimics reality?

If the alternative you gather from 2) causes the slightest problem for 1) and you still pick it, you're probably doing it wrong.

It depends on the level of abstraction and the end effect you wat to achieve. For example, if you make just a dungeon crawler, then economics aspects can stay very simplistic. But if you make a "Merchant - the RPG", then yes, you'd better do you homework and implement realistic solutions or at least that wouldn't cause you to faceplam, thinking "that's just stupid". Well, unless you are shooting for Facebook users.

 

[imweasel]

How thoughtful of you to have italicized the main fallacy yourself.

Yeah, you're welcome. I really wanted to emphasize that.

 

[Hormalakh]

If combat is fun, I'll be sure to pick a fighter. If it's more fun to shoot spells up people's butt, I'll pick a wizard. If it's more fun to sneak around, I'll be picking a thief.

If combat isn't fun, I won't be complaining about why I'm not getting XP. I'll be complaining that combat isn't fun and I hate being a fighter/monk/barbarian/paladin.

Wizards are easy: make a nice set of spells.
wrt rogues, there has been some talk about Commandos and Thief, etc as inspiration for this. I think this would be fun.

It seems like melee combat is really the sticking point. They need to find inspirations that make such combat fun. Then people won't be wanting XP - the fact that it was fun would be a sufficient reward. Look at non-RPGs and how they deal with combat. People don't expect XP for every kill because they had fun playing with the mechanics. Their reward came from the combat experience itself.

 

[imweasel]

If combat is fun, I'll be sure to pick a fighter. If it's more fun to shoot spells up people's butt, I'll pick a wizard. If it's more fun to sneak around, I'll be picking a thief.

If combat isn't fun, I won't be complaining about why I'm not getting XP. I'll be complaining that combat isn't fun and I hate being a fighter/monk/barbarian/paladin.

All classes can sneak and all can engage in combat. If you feel like (nonsensical) combat, then you can fight. Or you can just sneak. Just do whatever you feel like doing, it doesn't matter. The system will be really flexible, there is no disadvantage at doing one or the other.

Lotsa Phun.

 

[Hormalakh]

Sawyer has already said that certain classes get bonuses with certain skills. Keep up.

Also I hate degenerate save/loading. One of the reasons I didn't like Thief a lot is it required plenty of the replaying until you became so familiar with the level, you could walk through it in your sleep. Maybe it's fun for some, but I consider it bad game design. The system worked much better than Dishonored, while being similar in principle. It lets you make informed decisions about your next move even on the first playthrough by the virtue of giving you superpowers. Also getting detected does not get you instakilled most of the time.

The safety buffer of a suspicious/investigation state was a welcome addition to stealth games. Two of my favorite stealth-oriented games, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Hitman: Blood Money, use suspicion states to a) push back against a player engaging in risky behavior and b) give the player an additional tool for manipulating AI. The consequences for a minor error were usually not game-ending.

Saving/reloading to try different approaches or to attempt something you, the player, botched isn't degenerate at all. I'd say that's why save/reload is present in games. If players save/reload to perform the same action with the same level of proficiency and reasonably expect a different outcome due to RNG, I'd say that's degeneration. I don't think that's why designers put save/load in games and I don't think that's the way in which players want to engage the game. Earlier Hitman games had a much more "loosey-goosey" detection mechanic, so you could walk by a character once and set him off immediately -- but reloading would allow you to perform the same action in the exact same way and avoid detection.

...

To address JFSOCC's OP, while PE is not primarily a stealth game, we do want stealth to be an enjoyable and fun element of gameplay. Our mechanics will likely be much simpler than those found in the Commandos series (which I also enjoyed, BTW), but we do want to make it more in depth than pressing a button and having virtual dice roll in the background.

Stealth will not be solely the province of rogues, though rogues will likely be able to more easily penetrate areas/avoid detection at close range than most other classes. Additionally, rogues may have class abilities that allow them to take advantage of stealth at the opening of combat (should you choose to use stealth for positioning rather than avoidance).

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63102-commandos-a-stealth-perspective/page__st__20#entry1298295

 

[Roguey]

I think the vault entrance would have felt pretty dumb without the rats. It was a brief intro to the combat system in a low-risk situation and gave the player more to do on the first screen than just leave. It was a great area.

The area didn't need 20 rats though. It only has 20 rats in it so you can leave it with 300 xp and think "Hell yeah I'm a third of the way to level 2 baby"

 

[Aldebaran]

On the economy, I think a bit of realism can help fix this issue.

The problem is that players start to build up a vast hoard of +1 swords and +2 maces each time they swing through goblin alley and can then easily convert these quickly outdated magical weapons into huge amounts of gold. It seems like a perfectly reasonable sequence of events, but in reality it makes very little sense at all. Why would a store ever buy these? Who is the market? The only people with any money in the game universe seem to be nobles and adventurers, two demographics which can't possibly be numerous enough for every store to find buyers. Even then, no one buys the Slingshot +2, they kill a goblin for that. What they really want is Angleman's Non-Euclidean 780 Circle, a sword that only the highest quality dealers could ever hope to have, never mind sell.

This leads to a very simple, if a bit pedantic, fix: there are only two types of stores, those that buy basic weapons and sell to the average person, and those that buy historical artifacts and sell them to the wealthy. If you take a Boomerang +1 to the latter, then you will be laughed out of the store. If you try the former, then they will accept one or two lesser magical weapons (for the odd adventurer with money who stops by), but after that point they will only buy them at a rate comparable to the weapon's basic equivalent.

Let's see if that can get another 200 page discussion going on video game economies.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Shit.

I can't really believe this. Why are there so many magical weapons in the world? Does that not hurt the story and its consisitency if magical things are so easily available? Instead of playing with the economy for making sense of shit, why not have the shit in the first place? Don't put so many magical weapons! Don't give us so much trash that is NOT worth anything anyway. It is NOT necessary.

 

[Aldebaran]

Unfortunately, many RPGs--whether they realize it or not--are influenced by Forgotten Realms, a setting where magic is readily available, and in fact every hermit living on top a tower, inside a mountain, or under a fallen log is someone who can bring a nation to its knees.

Its not all bad though, a large variety of magical weapons are an easy way to give the ability to customize a fighter class, which often goes underdeveloped otherwise. And it can become very difficult to explain the lack of magical implements when you also want to include a fair amount of magical enemies into your game, which provide a very convenient tool to create interesting encounter design. That is, if they are used properly.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Unfortunately, many RPGs--whether they realize it or not--are influenced by Forgotten Realms, a setting where magic is readily available, and in fact every hermit living on top a tower, inside a mountain, or under a fallen log is someone who can bring a nation to its knees.

Its not all bad though, a large variety of magical weapons are an easy way to give the ability to customize a fighter class, which often goes underdeveloped otherwise. And it can become very difficult to explain the lack of magical implements when you also want to include a fair amount of magical enemies into your game, which provide a very convenient tool to create interesting encounter design. That is, if they are used properly.

I have though of the melee classes and why they become uninteresting in say IE games. The reason is definitely not the lack of magical items. The reason is that they have a very one dimensional mechanics opposed to rogues or spellcasters.

 

[Aldebaran]

I agree, what I was referring to is that, without a large amount of weapon options or upgrades, warrior classes in those situations are basically left with nothing. Ideally they should be given their own system of techniques/stances/what have you, but, in the absence of the creativity or time to pull that off, a large amount of weapons available at least creates the illusion of depth to the class.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I agree, what I was referring to is that, without a large amount of weapon options or upgrades, warrior classes in those situations are basically left with nothing. Ideally they should be given their own system of techniques/stances/what have you, but, in the absence of the creativity or time to pull that off, a large amount of weapons available at least creates the illusion of depth to the class.

But I would say and I am sure you will agree, that this problem is of mechanics and need not be solved by putting in another problem of too many magical items, instead the mechanics for fighters should be corrected and that would make playing them that much more enjoyable.

 

[suejak]

I think the vault entrance would have felt pretty dumb without the rats. It was a brief intro to the combat system in a low-risk situation and gave the player more to do on the first screen than just leave. It was a great area.

The area didn't need 20 rats though. It only has 20 rats in it so you can leave it with 300 xp and think "Hell yeah I'm a third of the way to level 2 baby"

Hmm. I'm uncomfortable with this idea that an area should only have as many killable monsters as it expects you to kill. I'm pretty sure I've never even attempted to kill all the rats in the Vault 13 entrance, and I never gave a shit about that. However, I'm also glad that I didn't exterminate all the rats in the cave just by trying to get to the entrance. That would have made the environment feel very artificial.

 

[tuluse]

However, I'm also glad that I didn't exterminate all the rats in the cave just by trying to get to the entrance. That would have made the environment feel very artificial.

Why don't we have a smiley for larper or larping or larp?

:declining: