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

[Roguey]

no combination of powers, talents and attribute ranges will be significantly surperior to the other. Players will not be rewarded for creativity in that department.

He wants every possible build to have different strengths and weaknesses so that's not his goal.

Also http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/415058606723985511

 

[Dreaad]

You are needlessly overcomplicating the issue Sensuki. The fact is that when Sawyer says he designs based on player experiences, and the player experiences he cites are from terrible retards who don't even buy armor for their characters, it paints a picture of someone who is designing for the lowest common denominator. That's really all there is to it.

EDIT: That might not be what he is doing, or what P:E will end up being. But this thread only makes sense in-so-far as we discuss based on what we know.

Totally agree with this. This is more or less the biggest reason for decline in RPG design, it's based on simplification so that people can not make mistakes while playing. I find it kind of staggering how many people fail to realize that complications, hidden content and the ability to fuck up is why so many old RPG's are more fun. It's all based on achievement, it feels good when you finally pull your shit together and struggle through a section of a game, you feel nothing when everything is handed to you repeatedly.

It's kind of hard to tell exactly how much Sawyer is taking away from 4th E but it kind of looks like it's a whole bunch of fancy versions of HP bloat.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

You are needlessly overcomplicating the issue Sensuki. The fact is that when Sawyer says he designs based on player experiences, and the player experiences he cites are from terrible retards who don't even buy armor for their characters, it paints a picture of someone who is designing for the lowest common denominator. That's really all there is to it.

EDIT: That might not be what he is doing, or what P:E will end up being. But this thread only makes sense in-so-far as we discuss based on what we know.

Totally agree with this. This is more or less the biggest reason for decline in RPG design, it's based on simplification so that people can not make mistakes while playing. I find it kind of staggering how many people fail to realize that complications, hidden content and the ability to fuck up is why so many old RPG's are more fun. It's all based on achievement, it feels good when you finally pull your shit together and struggle through a section of a game, you feel nothing when everything is handed to you repeatedly.

It's kind of hard to tell exactly how much Sawyer is taking away from 4th E but it kind of looks like it's a whole bunch of fancy versions of HP bloat.

And on a different note, having a more complex and elaborate systems often allows for emergent gameplay, strategies and builds that the designer hadn't anticipated, which is a huge part of what makes a system good, in my opinion. Just look, for instance, how many weird and unusual party comps you can complete ToEE with. I'm pretty sure when Sawyer looks at something like, say, soloing BG2 with a Kensai/Mage or whatever, he sees it as the game's flaw.

Now that I think about it, it's the same kind of rigid, control-freak design process, that resulted in all the flaws of Starcraft 2's multiplayer.

 

[Infinitron]

Been playing the Darkness over Daggerford module for NWN all day. NWN is such a miserable platform for a complex RPG, and the game is so fucking easy...yet I'm still having a blast. Love those Ossian sidequests.

I log in to the Codex, read the past three pages of this thread that have accumulated and suddenly it all seems like a pointless waste of time. "Dumbed down stats" aren't going to ruin your RPG, folks. Content is king.

Totally agree with this. This is more or less the biggest reason for decline in RPG design, it's based on simplification so that people can not make mistakes while playing. I find it kind of staggering how many people fail to realize that complications, hidden content and the ability to fuck up is why so many old RPG's are more fun. It's all based on achievement, it feels good when you finally pull your shit together and struggle through a section of a game, you feel nothing when everything is handed to you repeatedly.

What sort of complications and fuck-ups? Tactical combat fuck-ups? Actual gameplay fuck-ups? Or "shit shit shit my character is gimped, need to restart" fuckups?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I log in to the Codex, read the past three pages of this thread that have accumulated and suddenly it all seems like a pointless waste of time. "Dumbed down stats" aren't going to ruin your RPG, folks. Content is king.

Good, good, if only you could've realized this in the midst of that Fallout thread.

 

[Infinitron]

I log in to the Codex, read the past three pages of this thread that have accumulated and suddenly it all seems like a pointless waste of time. "Dumbed down stats" aren't going to ruin your RPG, folks. Content is king.

Good, good, if only you could've realized this in the midst of that Fallout thread.

Which one? The one where I complained about the UI getting in the way of the content, not about the game's actual systems and mechanics?

 

[Grunker]

What sort of complications and fuck-ups? Tactical combat fuck-ups? Actual gameplay fuck-ups? Or "shit shit shit my character is gimped, need to restart" fuckups?

See, this dichotomy is such bullshit, and you're a fool for parroting it just because Sawyer's stated it as fact. It's not about "completely useless build, unable to finish game" vs. "ep0x hax00rz i win all in a click." It has always been about degrees of efficiency. Feeling rewarded for using clever tactics backed up by decent strategy and customization.

Again, explain this: How did the people with tons of RPG experience get that experience when they couldn't even fight the goblins at the start of IWD1? And why did they back P:E?

 

[Infinitron]

What sort of complications and fuck-ups? Tactical combat fuck-ups? Actual gameplay fuck-ups? Or "shit shit shit my character is gimped, need to restart" fuckups?

See, this dichotomy is such bullshit, and you're a fool for parroting it just because Sawyer's stated it as fact. It's not about "completely useless build, unable to finish game" vs. "ep0x hax00rz i win all in a click." It has always been about degrees of efficiency. Again, explain this: How did the people with tons of RPG experience get that experience when they couldn't even fight the goblins at the start of IWD1? And why did they back P:E?

You mean the people who didn't buy equipment before fighting the goblins? That doesn't have anything to do with character building.

When did we decide that PE was going to be made for people who don't know how to play RPGs? I've seen no evidence of that.

“I know it's become a cliché, but the ‘By Gamers, For Gamers’ motto of Interplay is a good one. Especially given the types of games we are making, we should be designing them for people who want to play them, not for people who want to skip through them. Combat designed for people who like combat, conversations designed for people who like conversations, explorable areas designed for people who like to explore.”

 

[Dreaad]

Running into a room full of ilithids and realizing your warrior has no way out because she's blocked by other NPC's. Or saying something mildly offensive to psychopath crime family member in Fallout 2 and suddenly having the entire casino full of guards kill 2 of your companions permanently before you manage to escape the city. I don't think I have ever played a game in which I messed up my char build badly enough to have to restart, and the first time I played Fallout Tactics I focused my PC entirely on Charisma barter/repair... Generally speaking I guess I don't mind it if my main char is not a machine of death that is superior to everyone around him/her at killing things. If a game is long enough there is also plenty of time to make a char combat viable no matter how badly you mess up the creation process, barring maybe getting the wrong primary statistic for a char in D&D, but if you are retarded enough to make a mistake because you refuse to read a manual, then you should probably stick to adventure games or something.

Challenge is what you make of it, the only thing that makes for a bad challenge is HP bloat or QTE's from my experience.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Frankly, in my experience, trying to layer additional difficulty on top of a shallow system leads to frustration rather than challenge. Like in New Vegas, for instance.

I log in to the Codex, read the past three pages of this thread that have accumulated and suddenly it all seems like a pointless waste of time. "Dumbed down stats" aren't going to ruin your RPG, folks. Content is king.

Good, good, if only you could've realized this in the midst of that Fallout thread.

Which one? The one where I complained about the UI getting in the way of the content, not about the game's actual systems and mechanics?

The one where you championed the idea that Baldur's Gate is a better RPG than Fallout because it's party-based and AD&D is better than Fallout. Or was that Grunker? I might be mixing things up but I've walked away from that thread with the impression that you were mostly in agreement.

 

[Grunker]

What sort of complications and fuck-ups? Tactical combat fuck-ups? Actual gameplay fuck-ups? Or "shit shit shit my character is gimped, need to restart" fuckups?

See, this dichotomy is such bullshit, and you're a fool for parroting it just because Sawyer's stated it as fact. It's not about "completely useless build, unable to finish game" vs. "ep0x hax00rz i win all in a click." It has always been about degrees of efficiency. Again, explain this: How did the people with tons of RPG experience get that experience when they couldn't even fight the goblins at the start of IWD1? And why did they back P:E?

You mean the people who didn't buy equipment before fighting the goblins? That doesn't have anything to do with character building.

When did we decide that PE was going to be made for people who don't know how to play RPGs? I've seen no evidence of that.

So apparantly you didn't read the last 3 pages of this thread.

1) You didn't respond to my point that your dichotomy is screwed up.

2) This exchange:

To be honest man and this is just my opinion, from the sounds of it most people who beta test/QA test games aren't particularly fantastic gamers. I think he's been traumatized by how terrible people actually are at games. He seems to be pretty good at RPG games himself, but when he talks about his experiences of watching others it's as if he's seen some truly awful shit. It just goes to show with how bad Adam Brennecke and Chris Avellone are at games that people who work on games aren't necessarily very good at them. I'd wager that most of the people at Bioware are pretty awful at games too. Anyway as a result it seems he feels like he has to simplify systems to put a retard meter in there so it's possible for people like Adam and Chris to play through the content without being frustrated at the cost of perhaps some complexity that people like me would enjoy.

You honestly cannot tell me that ONE STAT for ALL BONUS DAMAGE sounds riveting. People who think that choosing attributes is annoying would probably be like "Great", but I just think it's terrible. I was expecting something a bit different but not this. Two sources of damage (magical and physical) is about the simplest I would go if I was an RPG designer doing a game like this.

This is frustrating to people like me and probably others here too that a game advertised as an "Old School RPG" has to have mechanics like this because people that play games in zombie mode and don't pay attention might accidentally pick a martial character and max the magical damage stat without realizing and then get frustrated at the game because they're having a hard time in combat. And I am telling you, based on what I have read (on SA and formspring, Obsidian etc) that is one of the reasons for a design decision like that.

Okay, I'd really like everyone to read my response to this, because it's important to me.

A lot of people are not great at games. I don't mean they are terrible at them, but they aren't great. They may or may not realize this, but when you get right down to it and see them sit down at a game and start to play, they do pretty well but some stuff just slips by. In RPGs, often that error is a strategic one that you don't immediately get stung by. The poison bites you 10, 20, 30 hours down the road.

I don't know what sort of person you're picturing in your head, but from comments that a lot of people make, I get the feeling you see a moron, a person who doesn't really like games, who isn't enthusiastic about them in the same way that you are. In some cases, this is true. But I've seen hundreds of volunteer and professional testers come and go. Most of them are actually pretty intelligent. They like or love games. They like or love RPGs and have played a bunch of them. They're still not terrific at them. They miss a bunch of things and they make a bunch of mistakes.

Even among hardcore PC RPG fans, there is a wide spectrum of skill, experience, and preference. When I started at Black Isle, I designed a bunch of fights in IWD that only a handful of veteran BG testers could get through. Memorably, I saw a QA tester blow a fuse because a fight in Lower Dorn's Deep was "impossible". When I showed him how I got through it, I started off by having my casters go through six rounds of buffs. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Uh... buffing my party?" This seemed normal to me. DUH YEAH BUFF YOUR PARTY TO HELL AND BACK LOCK AND LOAD PAY ATTENTION FFFFFFFFFF. Despite his high experience with RPGs and Baldur's Gate, he just... never thought of it. The problem was that the entire fight was balanced around a party that was optimally built and lit up like a Christmas tree from stacked buffs.

That's a combat example, but it really applies across the board: conversation details, reputation loss/gain, etc. Some players really do play as hard as they say they will. They stoically accept the consequences of companion death, of a dialogue node they carelessly picked 8 hours ago, of an Ironman combat that is going down the drain. For those players, the ability to turn off the "in case you missed it..." features is important. I get that and would like to support it as much as we can.

But again, just to be clear, a lot of actual players actually need these things. I'm not saying this because players come up to me and say, "Josh, I need this." I'm saying this because I'll talk to a tester (volunteer or pro) with a ton of RPG experience and later watch him or her play remotely. Or I'll pop open a Let's Play on YouTube from an enthusiastic player and watch how things turn out. Sometimes they ace it, sometimes they don't. Either way, what I see on that monitor doesn't lie.

You are needlessly overcomplicating the issue Sensuki. The fact is that when Sawyer says he designs based on player experiences, and the player experiences he cites are from terrible retards who don't even buy armor for their characters, it paints a picture of someone who is designing for the lowest common denominator. That's really all there is to it.

EDIT: That might not be what he is doing, or what P:E will end up being. But this thread only makes sense in-so-far as we discuss based on what we know.

Oh hooooooooooooooo. Don't get me started on that quote of yours Sensuki. If what he says is true, and there are backers (i.e. the ones he is designing the game for) like that, then it makes no sense that they backed an IE-like... His own argument eats itself.

I'm saying this because I'll talk to a tester (volunteer or pro) with a ton of RPG experience and later watch him or her play remotely. Or I'll pop open a Let's Play on YouTube from an enthusiastic player and watch how things turn out. Sometimes they ace it, sometimes they don't. Either way, what I see on that monitor doesn't lie.

Yet to gain this "ton of RPG experience" these players must have beat a lot of RPGs... RPGs that did not have what you claim they "actually need." Anyone have a clue what argument he is trying to make here, go ahead.

 

[Grunker]

Frankly, in my experience, trying to layer additional difficulty on top of a shallow system leads to frustration rather than challenge. Like in New Vegas, for instance.

I log in to the Codex, read the past three pages of this thread that have accumulated and suddenly it all seems like a pointless waste of time. "Dumbed down stats" aren't going to ruin your RPG, folks. Content is king.

Good, good, if only you could've realized this in the midst of that Fallout thread.

Which one? The one where I complained about the UI getting in the way of the content, not about the game's actual systems and mechanics?

The one where you championed the idea that Baldur's Gate is a better RPG than Fallout because it's party-based and AD&D is better than Fallout. Or was that Grunker? I might be mixing things up but I've walked away from that thread with the impression that you were mostly in agreement.

We agreed (though you simplify the argument once again, just like you did in that thread). I agree with you that Infinitron's behaviour here is a flip-flop - he was right on the line with me concerning Fallout's shallow combat and character system. He even reiterated it again in another thread about Fallout, the Codex and combat difficulty. Hopefully tomorrow he will wake up sane again and realise how much the module he is playing is being held back by the platform (I played it, it is).

 

[Infinitron]

I don't care to speak more about that dichotomy. I'm tired of repeating myself.

As for that exchange, I don't see what it has to do with PE. It was just Sawyer overreacting to some goons who were upset at having "tagged" dialogue options, IIRC.

Hopefully tomorrow he will wake up sane again and realise how much the module he is playing is being held back by the platform (I played it, it is).

What? That's what I said:

NWN is such a miserable platform for a complex RPG

I'm just saying, it's not a game breaker. And if even that is not a game breaker, then PE's weird stats will be? Nuh uh.

 

[Grunker]

I don't care to speak more about that dichotomy. I'm tired of repeating myself.

You: "shit shit shit my character is gimped, need to restart"

Me: That's not what it's about.

You: I'm tired of talking about that.

Well then why the fuck even bring it up

 

[Infinitron]

Well then why the fuck even bring it up

Because I wanted to understand what Dreaad was referring to? (BTW, I agree with his response - those harsh GAMEPLAY situations are what RPGs need more of)

 

[Grunker]

What? That's what I said:

You said it wasn't being held back despite the platform being terrible because it's all about content. It isn't, and Daggers is held back by the fact that it's on NWN.

Otherwise, the NWN2 remake of Baldur's Gate would be as good as the real thing, without question. Your argument is absurd.

 

[Infinitron]

What? That's what I said:

You said it wasn't being held back despite the platform being terrible because it's all about content. It isn't, and Daggers is held back by the fact that it's on NWN.

Define "held back". I said it was good. I didn't say it couldn't be better.

 

[Grunker]

What? That's what I said:

You said it wasn't being held back despite the platform being terrible because it's all about content. It isn't, and Daggers is held back by the fact that it's on NWN.

Define "held back". I said it was good. I didn't say it couldn't be better.

By "content is king" one might be excused for assuming you meant to say that systems are of little consequence.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I'm starting to think that the only way round the gamist objection that purely situational or weakly systemic skills don't belong in an ultimate (or even good) build is through generated content: if every stat has an indeterminacy built into it then having to adapt circumstances to your build rather than vice versa becomes the norm.

Generated content needs systems unconditionally, though.

I'm starting to think we're actually in full agreement and just arguing over semantics. I think that where I'm still thinking in terms of every single crpg I've ever played where all that's systemic is party- or character-bound, you're already thinking in terms of the perfectly simulationist crpg we'd both like to see where the entire world is systematized. To use the example of Accounting, it wouldn't be in the conventional sense of a quest where you'd "do the bookkeeping" for a mob boss for a certain reward, but there'd already be an economic system in place which the mob boss's organization is already a part of, and becoming its accountant would simply change the way it operated economically. The latter case would be systemic (and could be generated content), whereas the former would be situational; or am I still missing your point (I'm still not totally sure because all the examples you've used - weapon repair, party morale, etc. - were of the party-bound variety)?

 

[Gurkog]

I am still hoping for a good First Person Perspective RPG that has a ton of interactivity in an open world, preferably with some sort of firearms. So fucking bored of ye olde time fantasy shit.

 

[Ninjerk]

You will find you ah mistaken... abouT a GREAT... many... THINGS.

 

[Sensuki]

Hahah Josh is avoiding replying to anything I ask/say about Attributes. Must have shitlisted myself for the time being.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker On 4E classes: http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/485646834706971355

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer

 

[Roguey]

If only the other IWD designers had paid attention to Josh's notes.