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

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Fuck he is saying some retarded shit here. It's natural for a stronger person to inflict more pain with a weapon than a weaker person, and for a more coordinated person to have a greater chance to land a blow or dodge a hit. It is NOT logical for intelligence to change the damage your spells do.

Who gives a fuck what you find "natural" and "logical", simulationist scum?

Suppose then that you replace "logical" with "fun", or some other word you gamists can understand. Is it genuinely more fun to have to choose between the values of hypothetical Accuracy and Damage attributes for your fighter than whether you risk creating a low Wisdom fighter with abonimable saves and have him turned against you by the first mage you encounter? You might not be able to perfectly balance such a system (it'll always be better for a fighter to have higher Strength than Wisdom), but it still provides for more interesting choices.

 

[Infinitron]

Suppose then that you replace "logical" with "fun", or some other word you gamists can understand. Is it genuinely more fun to have to choose between the values of hypothetical Accuracy and Damage attributes for your fighter than whether you risk creating a low Wisdom fighter with abonimable saves and have him turned against you by the first mage you encounter? You might not be able to perfectly balance such a system (it'll always be better for a fighter to have higher Strength than Wisdom), but it still provides for more interesting choices.

Be careful about what assumptions you're making. PE will presumably have a stat that governs spell resistance as well. It just won't be the only thing that it governs. (Well, unless mages are common enough in the world that a spell resistance stat is truly worth picking for its own sake.)

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Be careful about what assumptions you're making. PE will presumably have a stat that governs spell resistance as well. It just won't be the only thing that it governs. (Well, unless mages are common enough in the world that a spell resistance stat is worth picking for its own sake.)

Sure, but to be balanced in the way Sawyer envisions, that'd have to be a general Defence stat. The reason his view on attributes sounds so boring is that he has the need to make things that'd be better suited as "mentalities" or "stances" or simply types of attack into attributes (high damage versus high accuracy, high attack versus high defence, etc.). He has to do so because this is the only way to achieve systemic balance.

 

[Grunker]

Pathfinder let's you customize your race as well as your class with alternative features.

I'd brofist @Infinitron's comment to Cynic if not for the fact that it, yet again, ignores complexity of scale, the lack of precedence for Sawyer's balance antics (which makes his success far more unlikely) and Sawyer's love for a broken system (4E). You're right in your response, but neither you or Roguey seems to have given any of these valid arguments much thought.

Well, "Sawyer is right...but he might fail!!" isn't a very constructive argument. Sure, he might fail. Everybody might fail.

That's not the argument. The argument is that Sawyer is what we in Danish would call "skråsikker." I guess the closest thing in English is "cocksure." The disdain for systems past is the sign of a man who doesn't know how innovation and better things are built. On top of this, what I meant with "complexity of scale" is that PE's system is looking like it will be a billion times more simple than D&D and Pathfinder, so of course it will be easier to make individual assets matter equally much. It's like if I laughed at a mathmatician while he did a complex problem and got the solution slightly wrong and I yelled "hah, what an idiot! 2 x 2 is 4! I'm so clever!"

In addition, though we agree that many of his arguments and goals are worthwhile, it should seriously concern anyone that his goalpost for all of it is 4th Edition - an almost universally hated system. For someone who has player behaviour and experience as an important criteria, doesn't it strike you as odd that he evidently ignores it whenever it goes against his own beliefs? A few obscure playtesters built a party that couldn't even survive BG2 13 years ago? Everything was wrong with that game. People more or less universally detest 4th Edition? Well, I don't care about people's opinions when they're wrong.

 

[Infinitron]

Sure, but to be balanced in the way Sawyer envisions, that'd have to be a general Defence stat.

No, not necessarily. I think you don't understand why Sawyer does what he does.

Weapon damage and spell damage stats have to be unified, because Fighters use mostly weapons and Mages use mostly spells. But that's not necessarily true for defense. If there's enough magical damage in the game, it is worth having a dedicated magical defense stat separate from physical defense.

The reason his view on attributes sounds so boring is that he has the need to make things that'd be better suited as "mentalities" or "stances" or simply types of attack into attributes (high damage versus high accuracy, high attack versus high defence, etc.). He has to do so because this is the only way to achieve systemic balance.

Let's see the stats before we make that assumption.

 

[Grunker]

His mod for F:NV was a model of balance and sobriety.

People always yell "but NV was pretty balanced" when this point is brought up, as if they honestly do not realize what insanely simplistic systems NV had compared to PE. Now scale this up for "real" systems.

There's a world of difference, to the point where you cannot compare meaningfully, between balancing a couple of superficial skills and their impact on a single-character game, and then balancing a true RPG system for a 6-character party who faces enemies that obey the rules of the same system.

 

[Cosmo]

There's a world of difference, to the point where you cannot compare meaningfully, between balancing a couple of superficial skills and their impact on a single-character game, and then balancing a true RPG system for a 6-character party who faces enemies that obey the rules of the same system.

Yeah yeah, don't blow things out of proportions. There have been enough games of this kind for this type of gameplay to be well-documented, and Sawyer's hardly starting from scratch, especially considering the fact that he has a pretty systematic mind.
This systemic thoroughness was the interesting part of Sawyer's mod ; to be precise it was not so much the system in itself than the fact that it managed (within F3's limitations of course) to eliminate every disjunction between said system and gameplay, making for a "lean" experience, something both enjoyable and elegant.
You people always seem to forget that for Sawyer systemic balance is only there to pave the way for gameplay.

 

[Roguey]

In addition, though we agree that many of his arguments and goals are worthwhile, it should seriously concern anyone that his goalpost for all of it is 4th Edition - an almost universally hated system. For someone who has player behaviour and experience as an important criteria, doesn't it strike you as odd that he evidently ignores it whenever it goes against his own beliefs? A few obscure playtesters built a party that couldn't even survive BG2 13 years ago? Everything was wrong with that game. People more or less universally detest 4th Edition? Well, I don't care about people's opinions when they're wrong.

Who cares if a bunch of grognards love bad systems they're familiar with and hate good ones? He's not making a game for them.

 

[Grunker]

In addition, though we agree that many of his arguments and goals are worthwhile, it should seriously concern anyone that his goalpost for all of it is 4th Edition - an almost universally hated system. For someone who has player behaviour and experience as an important criteria, doesn't it strike you as odd that he evidently ignores it whenever it goes against his own beliefs? A few obscure playtesters built a party that couldn't even survive BG2 13 years ago? Everything was wrong with that game. People more or less universally detest 4th Edition? Well, I don't care about people's opinions when they're wrong.

Who cares if a bunch of grognards love bad systems they're familiar with and hate good ones? He's not making a game for them.

He is making a game for the backers. If the stats aren't totally screwed here for some reason, the vast majority of the backers who know 4E will dislike 4E. Also, which grognards are we talking about here, exactly? The kids that were introduced to D&D via 4E but switched systems anyway (to, according to you, worse systems)? The generation of young adults that was supposed to be the cradle of 4E but never bought it, because the few games they played sucked ass? The professional store clerks who played hours upon hours of it and found the games they ran to be drawn out to obscurity because of HP bloat and actions and tactics to be repetitive? The fairly uncritical consumers that youth clubs constitute? Because if you only talk about former 3E players, then you have no idea who buys books in these stores. I do, because I spent the better part of High School working in one.

4E failed universally, not just in attracting the oldschool crowd. Perhaps you also noticed it's the only iteration of D&D at all not to have a digital counterpart?

By the way, did you know that 4E is the least playtested system of all D&D iterations. That's right. You're so keen on ridiculing designers who couldn't give a fuck how the system actually played, yet you defend the one, single system that had had a completely closed development cycle. It was pretty much developed from A-Z behind closed doors and suddenly, BAM, released. There wasn't even much of an internal testing period.

If you knew ANYTHING about the subject instead of just aping the thoughts of your gurus, you'd know that this closed development cycle is the no. 1 criticism of 4th ed. among people who follow the scene. It's also why D&D Next has the most open development cycle to date.

The fact is that Sawyer ignores player experience when it is convenient, and at other times it is his alpha-omega.

 

[Grunker]

There's a world of difference, to the point where you cannot compare meaningfully, between balancing a couple of superficial skills and their impact on a single-character game, and then balancing a true RPG system for a 6-character party who faces enemies that obey the rules of the same system.

Yeah yeah, don't blow things out of proportions. There have been enough games of this kind for this type of gameplay to be well-documented, and Sawyer's hardly starting from scratch, especially considering the fact that he has a pretty systematic mind.
This systemic thoroughness was the interesting part of Sawyer's mod ; to be precise it was not so much the system in itself than the fact that it managed (within F3's limitations of course) to eliminate every disjunction between said system and gameplay, making for a "lean" experience, something both enjoyable and elegant.
You people always seem to forget that for Sawyer systemic balance is only there to pave the way for gameplay.

I don't know how any of what you said was relevant for my point, which was that believing Sawyer is capable of balancing a real system because he's made a mod for the shallow single-character business that is Fallout:NV is nuts.

 

[Roguey]

If you knew ANYTHING about the subject instead of just aping the thoughts of your gurus, you'd know that this closed development cycle is the no. 1 criticism of 4th ed. among people who follow the scene. It's also why D&D Next has the most open development cycle to date.

The fact is that Sawyer ignores player experience when it is convenience, and at other times it is his alpha-omega.

"D&D Next is going to fail because it's trying to be too many things to too many people"--Josh

 

[Grunker]

How is that even remotely relevant to to the argument put forward in my post? It's not, is it, because you have no reply. You just quoted some random bit of text and hoped for the best.

The day that you respond to tough arguments instead of ignoring them is the day I take anything you say seriously. So far, whenever I've gone into an actual discussion with you, you've backed out rapidly once any sort of discussion began to take shape. So before then, have fun with your delusions.

If you knew ANYTHING about the subject instead of just aping the thoughts of your gurus, you'd know that this closed development cycle is the no. 1 criticism of 4th ed. among people who follow the scene. It's also why D&D Next has the most open development cycle to date.

The fact is that Sawyer ignores player experience when it is convenience, and at other times it is his alpha-omega.

"D&D Next is going to fail because it's trying to be too many things to too many people"--Josh

"I am awesome"--Grunker

 

[evdk]

"D&D Next is going to fail because it's trying to be too many things to too many people"--Josh

You quoting St. Josh as if his widoms were some kind of ex cathedra indisputable declarations is getting a bit old. You know, instead of actual arguments.

(It's like using the appeal to authority fallacy using a person whose authority is pretty dubious)

 

[Roguey]

How is that even remotely relevant to to the argument put forward in my post? It's not, is it, because you have no reply. You just quoted some random bit of text and hoped for the best.

The day that you respond to tough arguments instead of ignoring them is the day I take anything you say seriously. So far, whenever I've gone into an actual discussion with you, you've backed out rapidly once any sort of discussion began to take shape. So before then, have fun with your delusions.

Real response: YCS is full of people who love 4e and Josh believes 4e failed because of WotC's milking and very poor official modules, not so much the systems.

 

[Sensuki]

Sensuki, that's what I was trying to do with the six attributes being emphasized differently with different classes when you said it was 11X the programming. So I'm a little unclear: should we invest in the increase in programming to have varied mechanics for each class and its attribute implementation or should we simplify for 1x the programming? I would say the former.

Yeah I know but your specific example IMO was very, very bad haha.

Weapon damage and spell damage stats have to be unified, because Fighters use mostly weapons and Mages use mostly spells. But that's not necessarily true for defense. If there's enough magical damage in the game, it is worth having a dedicated magical defense stat separate from physical defense.

Wait a second .... what? Can you be more clear please?

What kind of mechanics are you assuming for a 'Spell Resistance' type thing ? Do you mean, like DT which reduces damage/duration or a separate value for defenses against spells ?

Personally I think this is a bit like where you thought there was going to be combat skills, there's not. I don't believe Sawyer is going to include any arbitrary systems on top of what is already there.

 

[Grunker]

How is that even remotely relevant to to the argument put forward in my post? It's not, is it, because you have no reply. You just quoted some random bit of text and hoped for the best.

The day that you respond to tough arguments instead of ignoring them is the day I take anything you say seriously. So far, whenever I've gone into an actual discussion with you, you've backed out rapidly once any sort of discussion began to take shape. So before then, have fun with your delusions.

Real response:

That's a response to a single part of my post, but at least it's an honest reply. I don't really much care what YCS is full of, the fact is that once 4E went into "playtesting", the results were very bad. People generally liked that all classes had something to do, and there were a few systems people really enjoyed (rituals) but the basic systemics failed: identical tactics were repeated in encounters, players felt no difference when switching between classes and low damage characters fighting high HP monsters meant that every encounter took a very look time to complete, often with players using the same At Will powers again and again and again. Tiered magic items completely drained uniqueness and tactical variety in the item system. Everything became a question of which tier you had; individual item powers were almost insignificant. The fact of the matter is that by solving one problem (lack of balance), 4th Edition completely drained D&D of build diversity, tactical variety and interesting combat and skill challenges.

I'm not some nay-sayer grognard who dismisses 4th Edition because it's shiny, you know this. I've played it, and probably more than Sawyer have. You've seen my attitude towards it many times: 4th edition had some really good ideas and a horrific, disastrous execution.

4E failed for many reasons. Systemic failure was a very big part of it. Otherwise, the people who bought the system would still be playing it, and the system would only have failed commercially. Yet 4th Edition has the least active community, the fewest games played in stores, and even among its fans most have another system they like better.

I'll wait while you reply to the above and this:

You're so keen on ridiculing designers who couldn't give a fuck how the system actually played, yet you defend the one, single system that had had a completely closed development cycle. It was pretty much developed from A-Z behind closed doors and suddenly, BAM, released. There wasn't even much of an internal testing period.

[...]

The fact is that Sawyer ignores player experience when it is convenient, and at other times it is his alpha-omega.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker makes good arguments ITT. Sending Josh Sawyer a link to this conversation, let's see if he responds. (probably not)

 

[Sensuki]

That's a response to a single part of my post, but at least it's an honest reply. I don't really much care what YCS is full of, the fact is that once 4E went into "playtesting", the results were very bad. People generally liked that all classes had something to do, and there were a few systems people really enjoyed (rituals) but the basic systemics failed: identical tactics were repeated in encounters, players felt no difference when switching between classes and low damage characters fighting high HP monsters meant that every encounter took a very look time to complete, often with players using the same At Will powers again and again and again. Tiered magic items completely drained uniqueness and tactical variety in the item system. Everything became a question of which tier you had; individual item powers were almost insignificant. The fact of the matter is that by solving one problem (lack of balance), 4th Edition completely drained D&D of build diversity, tactical variety and interesting combat and skill challenges

This is my exact fear. I thought exactly the same thing about 4th edition and I too believe the result is due to the obsessive mathematical symmetry of systems. I was relieved to hear that P:E's class system has at least has some variation, but a lot of the groundwork combat systems are a bit worrying.

 

[Cosmo]

I don't know how any of what you said was relevant for my point, which was that believing Sawyer is capable of balancing a real system because he's made a mod for the shallow single-character business that is Fallout:NV is nuts.

Your "point" only deserved to be overlooked because it was not a point, but a petitio principii. And what i said about his mod didn't pertain to the transerability of design from a system to the other, but to Sawyer's guidelines regarding system design as seen in his work rather than in his words. But i understand we've not seen what he can do with something that he didn't only balance, but also built from the ground up.

 

[Sensuki]

Grunker makes good arguments ITT. Sending Josh Sawyer a link to this conversation, let's see if he responds. (probably not)

A while ago I had an argument on SA with a bunch of peeps about 4E being shit. I've also questioned Josh Sawyer about editions of D&D in an interview. Personally I don't think he believes that 4E is that bad. The class design in P:E is exactly what he said he was going to do, a mix of 3.5 and 4E. At-will, encounter and daily abilities are in, 'gain something new per level' is in a la Pathfinder/4E but classes have a mix of passive, modal and active abilities, rather than having exactly the same amount each.

I think Josh's skill and attribute design sounds like what 4E should have done, rather than what they actually did. He thinks that 4E is the most mechanically sound system of D&D so I think if you said 'my friend is worried about P:E being too much like 4E he will just say something like 4E is the most balanced version of D&D but I didn't like some of it's systems etc.

 

[Cosmo]

I guess what we should try to learn is wether Sawyer unabashedly loves 4ed or merely the design philosophy behind it...

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Sure, but to be balanced in the way Sawyer envisions, that'd have to be a general Defence stat.

No, not necessarily. I think you don't understand why Sawyer does what he does.

Weapon damage and spell damage stats have to be unified, because Fighters use mostly weapons and Mages use mostly spells. But that's not necessarily true for defense. If there's enough magical damage in the game, it is worth having a dedicated magical defense stat separate from physical defense.

Of course, but only in the same sense that spell damage and weapon damage don't "necessarily" have to be unified in order to make a balanced system. He could make strength have all sorts of weird wizard advantages and intelligence vice versa. The reason why you're right that he "has" to unify damage is that that's the only realistic way of making such a balanced system work. You're right that defense is somewhat different because it transgresses class, but the difference isn't as fundamental as you make it out. Splitting defense creates a host of balancing issues: for instance, how do you balance magic defence with damage? Do you maybe split damage, thereby creating even more problems, or do you "add something" to magic defence like you argued earlier? Here you'd get the same problems they had with "adding something" to crafting in order to achieve balance. You could try going over all these issues, but why would you if you can just have a general Defence stat?

The reason his view on attributes sounds so boring is that he has the need to make things that'd be better suited as "mentalities" or "stances" or simply types of attack into attributes (high damage versus high accuracy, high attack versus high defence, etc.). He has to do so because this is the only way to achieve systemic balance.

Let's see the stats before we make that assumption.[/quote]

I was referring to his view points, not whether he eventually ends up compromising on them or not.

 

[Starym]

Not to derail the rape discussion or anything but an actual daily spell that cured the disability debuff after a character died would actually be pretty damn good - you'd spend a daily resource and yet the party member would still be at 1 health and a huge liability if you didn't keep him extremely safe. Really like that kind of tradeoff tbh. The spell would have to be somewhat high level though, so it could never "drop down" to per-encounter.

I think that's a waste of an ability tbh.

Well it would be a cleric spell and since they're mostly buffs and no healing whatsoever I think there's a large gap in their spell lists compared to D&D. Sure it's a fringe utility spell but you know there will be tons of people that have their companions perma down so it would be a pretty viable choice for them. This all depends on how frequent rest spots will be though and how difficult/annoying backtracking to a rest spot will be, I agree with you the spell would be redundant if you could easily always just go back to the last rest spot with little annoyance or consequence.

 

[Infinitron]

Splitting defense creates a host of balancing issues

It does? If there are lots of wizards throwing magic missiles at you in the game, then a stat dedicated to defense against magical attacks is useful enough to exist. What's so hard to understand about that?

Actually, by simplifying damage mechanics, the game will probably make effective magical attacks more ubiquitous. There'll be plenty of wizards out there with a high damage stat blasting you with their magical attacks, in the same way that there'll be plenty of fighters with a high damage stat slashing at you with their swords. So unifying the damage stat actually strengthens the case for splitting the defense stat.

 

[Sensuki]

I'm sorry man, but I do not see the logic in that and I believe you will find Sawyer does neither.

Damage you take will be dependent on your DT rating. Different armors will have strengths and weaknesses to different types of physical and magical damage. Sawyer has already given an example whereby bonus fire damage from a weapon is reduced by DT.

Attacks will oppose one (or two for secondary effects) of the defenses Deflection, Fortitutde, Reflex and Psyche and reduction of damage will be the difference between hit and graze. A Wizard with a higher bonus damage will flat out do more damage on hits and grazes.

That is not to say that there will not be buffs from Items, Abilities or Spells that reduce the effectiveness of certain types of damage, but I am absolutely sure there will be no such thing Attribute wise. It makes no sense and there was never an attribute in D&D that gave you spell resistance or anything. Attributes will merely raise your defense types, and I assume instead of Deflection and Reflex being from the same stat like D&D they will be separate.

Sawyer has also said that Wizard attacks will be lower damage AoE type stuff. There's a quote somewhere where he says that a Paladin's single target ability will always do more damage than a Wizard's or something (Although the Paladin's role has now changed from original conception).

I guess what we should try to learn is wether Sawyer unabashedly loves 4ed or merely the design philosophy behind it...

For example, in 4E, the designers clearly made an effort to allow every character class to have a roughly equal number of things to do. In most D&D tabletop games, one player controls one character, so it's important that every class feels like it has the same amount of active choices. This does not necessarily apply in a CRPG where one player is controlling up to 6 characters concurrently. While certainly the traditionally "passive" classes from the 1st/2nd/3.X era could stand to have more active-use or modal abilities, it is not necessary for them to literally have the exact same number of active-use abilities as other classes (e.g. wizards).

I have the best memories from 2nd Edition games, but I think the system was mechanically less interesting than 3.X, which in turn was not as well-designed as 4E. Pathfinder does address some of the larger 3.X problems, but it's really patching over them, not addressing some of the underlying mechanical issues.