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

[Infinitron]

That's funny - one of the things he mentions in this blog post as opposed to 'making no dump stats' is that he wants to reduce the gap between the min-maxer and the casual player.

Which is a good thing unless you happen to be mondblutian.

What the fuck does being mondblutian (i.e. a complete gamist) have to do with this? If anything, mondblutians by definition should approve of a stat-system which serves gameplay and nothing but gameplay.

Well, mondblut always min-maxes. However, I'm not sure if he's actually opposed to games where min-maxing isn't very effective. On the contrary, he might see that as an additional challenge.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Sensuki, or Infinitron, is there a chance one of you could ask this question to Sawyer (unless somebody already knows the answer):

Both in FONV and P:E you've gone from the old Fallout system of a flat damage reduction (DT) combined with a relative damage reduction (DR) for armor to DT exclusively, what is the reason for this? The old combination seemed to exist almost entirely for balancing purposes: a relatively high DT for armor results in weaker weapons being useless, while lower DT makes stronger weapons cut through the armor like it's butter. Opting for relatively low DT + DR allowed the old Fallouts to circumvent this problem. I especially ask because exclusively relying on DT seems to run counter to your views on the problems of "hard counters": why make it impossible for a character with a weak weapon to defeat a heavily armored opponent due to his high DT, when you can merely make it exceedingly difficult by the combination of a moderate DT and a DR?

It's not impossible because there's a minimum damage any weapon does even after DT. It's also not really a "hard counter" since it's not like one single weapon is the only effective way to breach the high DT. There are lots of weapons.

Ah, didn't know that first part. As to the second: sure, but there's also lots of spells to deal with wizards in the BGs, but (I thought) the point of the hard counter argument was that a lower level party was always automatically incapable of beating high level wizards because they lacked these spells (just like lower level parties might not have the ordinance to deal with heavy armor). But given that that point's moot now anyway, could someone then possibly still ask the question like this:

Both in FONV and P:E you've gone from the old Fallout system of a flat damage reduction (DT) combined with a relative damage reduction (DR) for armor to DT exclusively, what is the reason for this? The old combination seemed to exist almost entirely for balancing purposes: a relatively high DT for armor results in weaker weapons being useless, while lower DT makes stronger weapons cut through the armor like it's butter. Opting for relatively low DT + DR allowed the old Fallouts to circumvent this problem. Instead, you've now opted for a system where a weapon always does a certain amount of minimum damage regardless of DT; what is the advantage of this model to that of the old Fallouts?

 

[Infinitron]

(I thought) the point of the hard counter argument was that a lower level party was always automatically incapable of beating high level wizards because they lacked these spells (just like lower level parties might not have the ordinance to deal with heavy armor).

It's not really about low level vs high level - it's about having a hard requirement for a certain party composition. There's nothing wrong a with a high level encounter being too tough for a low level party.

In any case, I'll ask him, but the answer is probably - easier for players to understand and reason with in their heads, easier for designers to balance.

 

[mondblut]

That's funny - one of the things he mentions in this blog post as opposed to 'making no dump stats' is that he wants to reduce the gap between the min-maxer and the casual player.

Which is a good thing unless you happen to be mondblutian.

What the fuck does being mondblutian (i.e. a complete gamist) have to do with this? If anything, mondblutians by definition should approve of a stat-system which serves gameplay and nothing but gameplay.

Well, mondblut always min-maxes. However, I'm not sure if he's actually opposed to games where min-maxing isn't very effective. On the contrary, he might see that as an additional challenge.

The whole point of playing an RPG is figuring out which stats work and which don't, and putting that knowledge to maximum effect.

"no dump stats" = "any build is equally speshul" = enjoy your facebookville game, lol.

 

[Infinitron]

The whole point of playing an RPG is figuring out which stats work and which don't, and putting that knowledge to maximum effect.

OK, but what if that "maximum" is relatively low? I mean, what if you CAN still min-max, what if there ARE dump stats, but taking advantage of them just isn't as obvious or as super-effective as it is in other games? Do you see that as a flaw, or as an additional challenge?

 

[Sensuki]

I can't answer that question with any relation to Fallout or Fallout New Vegas. I have played Fallout but not completed it and when I did play it I didn't take too much notice of it's systems (because it didn't really require me to). Haven't played F:NV.

The P:E armor system has undergone a few revisions and I *think* is currently on it's 3rd revision which hasn't changed for a while.

This was the last official armor update.

In the Update 51 forum thread over at obsidian I asked a question about armor and Josh replied

The armor system hasn't changed since the last revision a while back. The system currently uses a single DT for a suit of armor with additional modifiers applied for things it is better or worse at. E.g. ordinary mail has 12 DT but it is 40% worse against crushing attacks.

This description is different from the last Kickstarter update about it but he may have been talking about a Formspring or SA discussion, I cannot remember.

Then there is also this SA forum post

Procs have their own voodoo math for calculating damage vs. DT. Procs are always a percentage of the weapon damage, so the proc damage is compared to the same percentage of DT, modified (if necessary) by special damage type resistances.

N.B.: While we will typically show damage and armor values in integers, we will actually track them as floats.

E.g. if you hit someone with a sabre that does +20% Shock damage, you would calculate the base (Slash) damage -- let's say it's 20 -- then the Shock damage, 4. The target is wearing armor that has 8 DT, no special modifier for Slash damage. It takes 12 damage from the sabre itself. The armor has -30% Shock DT, so that goes down to 5.6 DT, which is then reduced to 20% its normal value (because the proc is 20%), or 1.12 DT. The target takes an additional 2.88 damage from Shock, for a total of 14.88.

So my current understanding of the armor system is as follows:

The game has DT which is essentially DR, it is no longer some weird mathematical system (which IMO did seem rather cool). It is very simple.

Let's say you're wearing Hide Armor which has 8 DT and no special modifier for Slashing damage, and you are attacked by a Sabre wielder for 20 damage. Your armor reduces this value to 12 damage.

If you're wearing a Mail shirt (or Chain Mail or Hauberk depending on P:E's level of nomenclature) with DT 12 and you get hit with a Mace for 16 damage, the effective DT against Crushing is 12 - 40% (4.8) = 7.2 so you take 8.8 damage from the Mace.

It's interesting because Josh does not mention minimum DT which was a value in the first armor system's table where a weapon would always do some damage. So there may be some minimum value that gets through armor that he just has not mentioned in the last two posts. Probably a good question to ask him about actually.

 

[Sensuki]

That's not actually a bad thing. I want my games to be as hard for me as they are for the casuals. I don't want min-maxing to make things trivial.

Outside of RPGs I generally only play competitive games (with exceptions for when I get bored). I am not a 'singleplayer only' person like many people here. Competitive games are becoming so watered down that the skill floor is low, the skill ceiling is low and the skill gap between players is not as far apart as it used to be in older games (I am an FPS player so for me that's Counter-Strike 1.6 or previous, Call of Duty 1 & 2, RTCW/Wolf:ET etc etc etc).

I am not as good at RTS as I am at FPS because the amount of brain activity required for RTS is a lot higher, it requires you to be constantly switched on and thinking and I find that quite stressful so I don't really play RTS games competitively that much - I used to be very good at some of the older ones. I am also not asian. Starcraft 1 (not really an SC2 fan) was a great game and DotA is the best moba/arts by a country mile in regards to competitive play.

But yeah the newer versions of everything (Call of Duty 4 & beyond, CS:S/CS:GO, League of Legends, you name it) are all watered down and more accessible to the casual player.

This is something that pisses me off and it's really annoying that it's creeping into RPGs as well. I thought Project Eternity was going to be a bit more hardcore in that you had to know how to build characters properly and you had to learn by trial and error and become 'good' at the gameplay mechanics but it seems that the game is being designed once again so that there is less difference between the casual gamer and the competitive gamer. If the casual gamer can beat the game without having to be remotely intelligent about it then that doesn't bode well for the difficulty of the game even on harder difficulties for the more experienced player expecting a challenge.

That's not even really my problem with Project Eternity though it's just that I think the system design for a lot of things is too simple. I can see the stats that split damage/accuracy and attack speed being a system that is very easily being able to be broken down via a mathematical formula to determine what the optimal value is for DPS.

 

[Infinitron]

I am also not asian.

I thought Project Eternity was going to be a bit more hardcore in that you had to know how to build characters properly

and become 'good' at the gameplay mechanics

These are two separate things - Josh was only referring to the former.

 

[mondblut]

The whole point of playing an RPG is figuring out which stats work and which don't, and putting that knowledge to maximum effect.

OK, but what if that "maximum" is relatively low? I mean, what if you CAN still min-max, what if there ARE dump stats, but taking advantage of them just isn't as obvious or as super-effective as it is in other games? Do you see that as a flaw, or as an additional challenge?

*shrug* you don't have to minmax in most games to begin with. Otherwise there wouldn't be that many larpers around. No, you just do it because you can, and because it is fun.

Anyway, I thought the Kkkodex prided itself on despising the games that flaunt themselves as being completable by your disabled grandmother and your retarded 3 years old nephew as a virtue and an achievement in game design?

There are no bad characters, lol. Diversity and political correctness finally got into RPGs. In b4 below-norm attributes begin granting bonuses carefully measured to be equally valuable with above-norm bonuses.

 

[Infinitron]

The whole point of playing an RPG is figuring out which stats work and which don't, and putting that knowledge to maximum effect.

OK, but what if that "maximum" is relatively low? I mean, what if you CAN still min-max, what if there ARE dump stats, but taking advantage of them just isn't as obvious or as super-effective as it is in other games? Do you see that as a flaw, or as an additional challenge?

*shrug* you don't have to minmax in most games to begin with. Otherwise there wouldn't be that many larpers around. No, you just do it because you can, and because it is fun.

Anyway, I thought the Kkkodex prided itself on despising the games that flaunt themselves as being completable by your disabled grandmother and your retarded 3 years old nephew as a virtue and an achievement in game design?

There are no bad characters, lol. Diversity and political correctness finally got into RPGs. In b4 below-norm attributes begin granting bonuses carefully measured to be equally valuable with above-norm bonuses.

You didn't really answer my question, but I'll infer from your response that you don't care that much how effective or game-breaking min-maxing is as long as it's possible.

 

[Sensuki]

I added a bit after you posted.

Someone is going to break the stats no matter what. At best (and even Josh may be happy with this), I can see it coming down to bumping accuracy and damage or accuracy and attack speed. I can almost see too many points in attack speed becoming redundant depending on the system behind it. In DotA 2 for example, attack speed is nice don't get me wrong but it's generally not as effective as damage because of various factors such as harrasing/disables etc etc. Combat in the IE games goes for a relatively short amount of time most of the time 10-30 seconds per battle not counting pauses, longer battles up to a minute maybe.

I suck at complex mathematics, I'm more of a logical thinker but it would be worth someone running down a few calculations when the game comes out for the following:

Because of the graze system, most attacks will do some damage, so increasing damage has a benefit on every hit that does damage.

Accuracy will increase the amount of proper hits you get vs grazes. If the rate of accuracy increase between stat bumps is too low (which I can see coming from miles away) and the fact that P:E will use a normal RNG; The first revision of accuracy at least will probably be an all or nothing stat, you either bump it real high to get the 20-25% accuracy bonus or you just leave it and raise damage instead.

Attack speed is another one that is very dependent on the rate of increase, like accuracy. If bumping attack speed only gives minimal values (such as a maximum of between +25-+50% or something) then it's probably going to have the same issue as accuracy.

The more points there are to distribute when selecting attributes, the higher chance of redundant choices - so IMO it would be best to have a Fallout style system instead of a D&D system. That way if the range is something like 1-10 or whatever then every point will have a chunkier effect on efficacy for that attribute ... it's still prone to min-maxing and the problems I previously mentioned but in less extreme increments.

 

[Infinitron]

Someone is going to break the stats no matter what.

Yes, probably. And the reason for that is - in the end of the day, the difficulty of the game is based on its content, and it's possible that content-wise, the game will skew towards rewarding a certain build. So that'll become the build the mondbluts of the world min-max towards.

To put things more simply - you might have a "balanced" system where you can create one character build that works better against ogres and another character build that works better against orcs, but if 90% of the fights in the game are against orcs, then the anti-orc build is a munchkin build.

Of course, I'm sure the Obsidian team will do their best to make sure things aren't as stark as that.

 

[mondblut]

You didn't really answer my question, but I'll infer from your response that you don't care that much how effective or game-breaking min-maxing is as long as it's possible.

I do. The more effective and gamebreaking minmaxing is, the more fun I get from indulging in it.

Of course, I expect nothing of this sort from an Affirmative Action RPG in question since they removed combat xp. It's not like the concept of "rpg for casuals and retards" is novel. On the contrary, you would be hard pressed to find an exception done in the past 10 years, and I am content I saw through this game the moment it was announced.

 

[Infinitron]

OK, updated my mondblut.txt

 

[Lancehead]

This is something that pisses me off and it's really annoying that it's creeping into RPGs as well. I thought Project Eternity was going to be a bit more hardcore in that you had to know how to build characters properly and you had to learn by trial and error and become 'good' at the gameplay mechanics but it seems that the game is being designed once again so that there is less difference between the casual gamer and the competitive gamer. If the casual gamer can beat the game without having to be remotely intelligent about it then that doesn't bode well for the difficulty of the game even on harder difficulties for the more experienced player expecting a challenge.

Chargen requires paying attention only because RPGs are generally balanced badly with regards to stat/skill/abilities/etc. application in content, not because it's some intelligent endeavour to undertake. And if a game requires meta knowledge of what works and what doesn't in order not to make a shit build, then it's a shit system.

 

[Sensuki]

I am talking specifically about intentionally reducing the gap between a min/maxer and a casual player, not about trap choices in character building. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive sure.

When you think about it having watched Chris Avellone play Arcanum or Adam Brennecke struggle through the IWD2 prologue - that's probably what Josh feels sympathy for, people like them that have a hard time playing games and run the risk of giving up because they're finding it too hard.

 

[Infinitron]

When you think about it having watched Chris Avellone play Arcanum or Adam Brennecke struggle through the IWD2 prologue - that's probably what Josh feels sympathy for, people like them that have a hard time playing games and run the risk of giving up because they're finding it too hard.

Hmm, dunno about that. From what I recall, Chris and Adam didn't fail primarily due to poor character building. They failed because they weren't paying attention to things during gameplay.

Remember - "games for people who like games".

 

[Lancehead]

I am talking specifically about intentionally reducing the gap between a min/maxer and a casual player, not about trap choices in character building. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive sure.

And the gap exists primarily because of how one builds his/her character.

When you think about it having watched Chris Avellone play Arcanum or Adam Brennecke struggle through the IWD2 prologue - that's probably what Josh feels sympathy for, people like them that have a hard time playing games and run the risk of giving up because they're finding it too hard.

What Infinitron said (though I haven't watched Brennecke's playthrough).

Still, I do think MCA would be a "casual player", the way I read from the blogpost on the previous page, according to Sawyer. I.e. someone who thinks of a character type, picks skills/abilities/etc. that seem relevant to the type and plays the game. Catering to this "casual player" doesn't imply making content devoid of any challenge nor any need for resourcefulness.

 

[Sensuki]

Hmm, dunno about that. From what I recall, Chris and Adam didn't fail primarily due to poor character building. They failed because they weren't paying attention to things during gameplay.

Remember - "games for people who like games".

Both Chris and Adam create gimp characters in their playthroughs. Well I am not an Arcanum expert but Chris' character isn't very good at combat and during Adam's IWD playthrough he did make many tactical errors, but he really put himself at a disadvantage by his character creation choices as well.

Chris seems to have done the equivalent of choosing a Mage for your first playthrough of BG1 and then going off the beaten path a little bit too early.

 

[Ninjerk]

I didn't see Adam's LP, but I wonder if he ever played D&D. I played D&D and AD&D before I ever played any CRPGs so I can't imagine trying to figure those systems out blind.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Procs have their own voodoo math for calculating damage vs. DT. Procs are always a percentage of the weapon damage, so the proc damage is compared to the same percentage of DT, modified (if necessary) by special damage type resistances.

N.B.: While we will typically show damage and armor values in integers, we will actually track them as floats.

E.g. if you hit someone with a sabre that does +20% Shock damage, you would calculate the base (Slash) damage -- let's say it's 20 -- then the Shock damage, 4. The target is wearing armor that has 8 DT, no special modifier for Slash damage. It takes 12 damage from the sabre itself. The armor has -30% Shock DT, so that goes down to 5.6 DT, which is then reduced to 20% its normal value (because the proc is 20%), or 1.12 DT. The target takes an additional 2.88 damage from Shock, for a total of 14.88.

I was just hoping for a critique of DT + DR from Sawyer and now you've ruined it, you bastard. I think I sort of get the reason for this system; I suppose it's just a way of making different types of damage (e.g. slashing + shock) work with a single DT without smaller values getting crushed in the process (especially through the weird "proc" thing arbitrarily dropping DT 80% to let the shock damage get through). Still seems a bit un-Sawyerlike that he didn't just go with a relative decrease: I think this'd work better on both counts Infinitron mentioned, namely more accessible for the player and (I'm guessing) easier to balance. The old Fallout system is easier to grasp than this one for instance.

 

[Lancehead]

By the way, Sensuki, it's not even about trap choices, it's that the way character building is generally done in RPGs is just bland and uninteresting. First you have chargen which is the most important phase since it more or less sets the path of progression. Here you're making choices either blindly or based on what the experience of playing past RPGs has taught you (i.e. tropes/conventions). Then levelling doesn't really alter where you put points into. If you're going to significantly diverge character progression in the middle of a game it would be because you've noticed something that's worth the divergence. That is, you're reacting.

I don't see anything monocled about the whole process. That's why I don't see catering to those who don't endlessly contemplate which combination of stats, skills, and perks will net them maximum skill points up to the level cap, as a bad thing.

 

[Sensuki]

I don't really have a problem with how character building is done in RPGs. I do think it could be better, certainly. Josh's views and discussions on such things have given me a lot of insight into the matter but I definitely disagree with the manner that he approaches some things in regards to Project Eternity in which the approach is somewhat 'extreme' in the fact that everything has become so simple.

The only cRPG system that I really fucking despised recently was Dragon Age.

If this was some whatever RPG, I wouldn't care. But it's not. It's the game that they said would be a spiritual successor to the IE games. The IE games used D&D rulesets (More importantly most of the IE games used 2nd Edition rules which is my favorite D&D version) and in many cases their system design has been very not-D&D making small-medium optimizations on what D&D did to make them better overall / for this game.

Then you have the completely unnecessary stuff like the Attribute system which is derived solely from a few things: Sawyer's view that gamism is superior to simulationism in regards to system design in general where the aim is to create a balanced system and that there shouldn't be any dump stats. That on it's own is fine, but the stark difference from how attributes are handled in D&D I find rather jarring. There is nothing wrong with Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma in broad strokes. Three physical stats, three mental stats. Now I am sure that you can apply Sawyer's design philosophy on top of a familiar system to make it fit and fit rather well.

I think the quest for ultimate balance is a futile one. An analogy I can think of (this may sound stupid) is that a headphone or speaker driver with a balanced frequency response sounds boring compared to a driver that moderately accenuates one of the frequency ranges more than the others. I think the same is true of System design and that is what I found with 4th editions 'mathematical' approach to system design. I do not remotely care for 4E character creation.

Dumbing down the system so that a casual player can grasp it/easily make whatever build they want and do well in the game I think has a higher chance of having a negative effect on the game moreso than a positive one.

The reason that there is no separation between physical and mental attacks is likely primarily because some noob will pick a character with predominantly martial powers and then max mental stats and effectively gimp his character. That just makes me facepalm.

But that's just me.

I accepted many of the earlier proposed systems but it is just becoming too much.

Cooldowns - At first they were considering it but due to RAGE they took them out. I was surprised they were even considering it TBH.

Quest XP only - undercuts XP min/maxers and powergamers - I was against this at first as I enjoyed XP for kills in the IE games, but I've come to accept it.

No Miss - now we have a 5% miss, but this is a very, very 'gentle' attack system

Less Random Criticals - Crits are now tied to skill rather than randomosity, not necessarily bad but random crits are pretty fun IMO.

Completely Unified System Mechanics

Completely Homogeneous Character Advancement

All skills being combat effective

Basic Attributes

Everything is simple and tries to promote 'fairness' and remove randomness where possibly. Now many people here probably look at this and think ... that actually looks really good but the further down the list I go more and more concern creeps into my mind that this is going to be another boring character system like 4th edition.

 

[Lancehead]

I don't think gamism vs. simulationism (stupid terms, by the way) has anything to do with this particular aspect. Take Morrowind for example. It's pretty much impossible to make a broken build in that game. You can in fact make a build completely blindly and still be viable. That's possible because there's an abundance of and variety in content, and the world is simulated as much as possible.

 

[Sensuki]

I didn't care for character creation in Morrowind, I hated the engine and I hated the Interface and first person viewpoint. Ever since I have boycotted every single Bethesda engine game including Fallout New Vegas.

They are stupid terms but Sawyer uses them all the time.