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

[Mangoose]

Aye

 

[agentorange]

finally some tits in this game

Looks good. I like wights and "im pretty lol jk im a monster"-women. Very Scandinavian folkloreish.

I'm glad they are going for a big beastiary. Creatures are 53534532x times more fun than "guard in red colors".

Eh, my favorite type of encounter is an adventuring party that is similar in build as yours. Along with some nice AI to put it on equal footing.

Yeah those were easily the best encounters in BG. Though some of the larger boss monsters can be fun too when they have exotic spells and stuff.

 

[IDtenT]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Reread what I wrote. I was referring to the opinion being shit.

Exactly which of his opinions are shit?

Balance.

 

[CappenVarra]

Great new thread title!

 

[Kz3r0]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Reread what I wrote. I was referring to the opinion being shit.

Exactly which of his opinions are shit?

Balance.

This seems to be the real problem, while his focus on game mechanics is commendable all seems to be in the function of balance for the sake of balance.

 

[circ]

671 pages? On this? Did some major level thread merging occur?

 

[Lancehead]

No, it seems the Codexers don't like fun to end.

 

[Grunker]

What's shit ? New Vegas ?
Or maybe you've been given the gift of prophecy and you KNOW that Project Eternity will be bad game ?

Reread what I wrote. I was referring to the opinion being shit.

Exactly which of his opinions are shit?

Balance.

This seems to be the real problem, while his focus on game mechanics is commendable all seems to be in the function of balance for the sake of balance.

That's not really true though is it? It is true that balance is, sadly, one of the pillars of his design philosophy, but it is hardly the only one. Playtesting is another (mechanical practice). Documentation and transparancy another.

 

[Kz3r0]

That's not really true though is it? It is true that balance is, sadly, one of the pillars of his design philosophy, but it is hardly the only one. Playtesting is another (mechanical practice). Documentation and transparancy another.

No, balance is the principal foundation, the rest is support.

 

[Infinitron]

Thing is, Josh rarely actually uses the word "balance". It's all about "Why should players ever choose this?"

That implies a certain amount of balance, but not Blizzard/MOBA-style "perfect balance", whatever that means. And I don't see anything bad about it.

 

[Roguey]

How about Sawyer's transformation from a young man into a middle-aged lesbian cyclist.

Young man? More like fat loser. From zero to thin, tattooed hero.

 

[Blaine]

Gettin' real tired of wuss wizards (hereafter referred to as "wussards") in RPGs in the name of balance.

In this game, an Irish cat-midget wielding a sharpened letter opener will be "equally attractive choice-ified" (thanks, Infinitron) against a sorcerer who's spent years studying forbidden arcane texts and performing eldritch experiments. This is at least one instance when the source material had it right. The wizard can fight a giant demon while en route to a sudden stop at the bottom of miles-deep shaft; the fat midget trips, falls on his face, and shits his pants whenever a goblin pokes its head over a rock in the distance.

 

[Arkeus]

The source material lies, lies lies. It pretends that fighters are the equals of wizards, when they clearly are not. Same for a lot of different classes- lies all around.

I don't think that making the wizards 'special' is a bad thing- in fact, i LIKE the idea that the wizards are, by far, the strongest class (or the cleric, or the druids, depending of the lore). OTOH, the lore shouldn't lie about it.

Also, when it comes to video games, it's a bit harder because you have to adjust encounters difficulty and so on, so having classes that are completely overpowered skews everything (lack of DM).

Not to mention that flat out saying 'this is the strongest class. Taking it is the same as putting the 'difficulty' mode a tab lower.

EDIT: another thing is that Josh almost never talks about balance between classes, but between skills. And he is totally right about this, no matter how butthurt some people are about criticizing fallout or arcanum.

 

[Infinitron]

Gettin' real tired of wuss wizards (hereafter referred to as "wussards") in RPGs in the name of balance.

In this game, an Irish cat-midget wielding a sharpened letter opener will be "equally attractive choice-ified" (thanks, Infinitron) against a sorcerer who's spent years studying forbidden arcane texts and performing eldritch experiments. This is at least one instance when the source material had it right. The wizard can fight a giant demon while en route to a sudden stop at the bottom of miles-deep shaft; the fat midget trips, falls on his face, and shits his pants whenever a goblin pokes its head over a rock in the distance.

Again, it's a case of overall usefulness throughout the game, not per-encounter usefulness. Will the "Irish cat-midget"(?!) be flat out worse than the sorcerer throughout the game? Will every FAQ for the game that shows up on GameFAQs say "This class sucks, never choose it"?

 

[J_C]

Ok, who was the idiot who renamed the thread?

 

[Infinitron]

When's that photo from? It's old enough that Josh is fat, but new enough that MCA isn't.

 

[Roguey]

Balance.

This seems to be the real problem, while his focus on game mechanics is commendable all seems to be in the function of balance for the sake of balance.

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/411582357821218135

When it comes to mechanics, I believe we should design systems that work together to produce challenging gameplay content and a variety of tools players can use to overcome those challenges. If challenges can be easily circumvented by using one skeleton key tactic (whether it's reloading, a singularly overpowering item/ability, or something else), then the gameplay will get boring quickly.

I think gameplay is most enjoyable when there's a balance of frustration and triumph. Without frustration, triumph becomes cheap. Continuous frustration with minimal/infrequent triumph often feels like it isn't worth the effort. Every player has a different balance point for what they enjoy, but if the systems have easy "outs", it can make the challenges trivial.

What's so wrong about that?


Furthermore http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/330578902298688741

What do you think about how some people say that balance doesn't matter in a non-competitive single player game?

They're wrong.

 

[Infinitron]

Ok, who was the idiot who renamed the thread?

Do not meddle in the affairs of administrators, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

 

[J_C]

Fuck the admins. Show me what you got!

 

[Roguey]

I'm interpreting it as sarcasm so it's hilarious.

 

[Roguey]

2000, from Icewind Dale development.

 

[DraQ]

Sawyer wants to end that... little does he realize, this sort of "cheating" is one of the most fun things about Baldur's Gate.

Wait, wat happen? I'm not up to date and want a tl;dr or links.

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer wants to end that... little does he realize, this sort of "cheating" is one of the most fun things about Baldur's Gate.

Wait, wat happen? I'm not up to date and want a tl;dr or links.

Nothing new happened, they're talking about how you won't get XP for killing in PE (including killing quest givers after you've done their quest for extra XP)

 

[Liston]

This seems to be the real problem, while his focus on game mechanics is commendable all seems to be in the function of balance for the sake of balance.

This is bullshit, he gave explanation for his every decision on P:E and none of them was "because balance, full stop". He pursues balance because he is trying to make every option that his game offers viable which is perfectly reasonable goal. What is the use of an option that is clearly inferior, especially if you don't have enough information to recognize it as such while making a decision? I think that problem with his approach is that most "imbalances" in RPGs came from area, encounter and quest design instead of ruleset itself (although usually it has its problems). It doesn't matter if he designs a perfect system if it isn't utilized properly in other areas of design.

I get a strong nerd vibe from Sawyer, he will state his opinion because he have arguments for it without any thought how it will be received and without any attempts to sugarcoat it. A lot of people mistake this kind of behavior for arrogance instead of lack of social skills, although I come to appreciate it a lot because of all the bullshit that is required in human communication. I don't think that anybody can argue that "problems" he identified in IE games are areas that can be improved (although his solutions aren't always good), but because of his attitude this is mistaken for arrogance and attacks on whole games that people love. This coupled with constant trolling from Roguey produces a lot of unproductive arguments where people attack him because irrelevant bullshit like what games he plays or misinterpreting his arguments like "balance for the sake of balance". And this is a shame because although I disagree with a lot of his solutions I think that at least it can produce a good conversations about RPGs but instead we have 671 pages most of which are of Roguey's trolling.

 

[serch]

I'm with Sawyer on this, a game designer must seek a good balance between options of pretended similar value to make a good job. If you want a particular character to be stronger than most for story reasons ,make it of a superior level, exception being those games that part from a lore that defines some classes as substantially better: wizards in Ars Magica, jedis in SW, space marines in WH.