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

[Roguey]

colorcoding for anyhing else than skill checks, and even sometimes there too, is pure stupidity

subconciously it makes you skip reading and make choices based on happy sparkly colours

it's like those choice-pinpointers in da2 et al

In games where dialogue is structured this way making it clear which options move the story further and which are just for more flavor is important. People who don't want fluff shouldn't be forced to hunt for the proper option and people who want to read all the fluff shouldn't have to risk accidentally clicking the option that cuts off all those options. This can be solved through better organization, but that requires a consistency that I've seen broken from time to time.

 

[Roguey]

Re: Dialogue I remembered Urquhart had this to say in the comments a few days ago

@fredgiblet I have been getting a lot of questions as well and, unfortunately, I don't have answers yet. Translating potentially 400K words is not something that is going to come cheap.

Since their target is 400,000 words I don't want any of those wasted on mundane crap. You know what other RPG has 400,000 words? Dragon Age 2.

 

[DraQ]

Morrowind had impersonal Info-dumps, in fact it was one of the main reasons why I couldn't bother playing it more than a few hours, but Bethesdas dialogue in general is shit:

Apart from being a bit on the dry side it worked just fine for the game of this type. And it didn't dump information on you against your will, but still allowed you to learn more about a lot of stuff, should you desire to.

OTOH:

Those Torment options are a mess tbqh and Bioware didn't do anything of the sort. Here were their writing guidelines for BG2 from their post-mortem:

1. No modern day profanity. This excludes lesser profanity, i.e. damn, hell, bitch, bastard.
2. Each of the dialogue nodes (dialogue piece) spoken by an NPC should be limited to two lines. Only in VERY RARE circumstances are more than two used
3. All character responses should be one line when they appear in the game. There should be no reason for them to be longer than this.
4. Try not to use accents in dialogue. For certain characters (Elminster, sailor types) it is all right, but for the most part it should be avoided.
5. When using player choices, try to keep the visible number to about three. Two or four are all right, but only when really necessary
6. When an NPC talks directly to the main player, this should be noted for scripting purposes. Other dialogue should be included for when someone other than the main player talks to this character.
7. Random dialogue should be avoided, or at least used sparingly. Commoners should have only a few random dialogue lines, but there should be several different commoners to talk with

Bolded relevant rules. Though it is noted in the article that they did bend/break some of these rules and the guideline wasn't even set in stone till near the end of the project.

Could be easily, with just a few minor changes (like getting rid of Elminster), used as spoof of modern Bethesda's (TES IV-V) guidelines for dialogue.

And 'Dex would rage about it.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

It's really sad when developers say this.​

You have a unique opportunity here to do it and do it well instead of just going the easy route that removes immersion and promotes gaming the system.

It's not easier to write code to display every check and write alternate replies/nodes for every fail case. It's the opposite of easy.

Like I wrote, I don't have any objections to optionally turning things off, but I have no illusions about how most people actually play these games vs. how they say they want to play them. I've been watching them do it and dealing with the aftermath for ~13 years.

 

[Grimlorn]

 

[Roguey]

Yay transparency. That is happy news. For me. That it makes others unhappy makes me happier.

 

[DraQ]

This is a world where guns have been invented, I'm pretty sure would have figured out a monetary system too.

Barter systems are cool, they also help mitigate fucked up economy that normally leads to player getting filthy rich in a short period of time.

 

[Infinitron]

Provide sources you llamas http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=123#post407879053

 

[IronicNeurotic]

Yay transparency. That is happy news. For me. That it makes others unhappy makes me happier.

I was less talking about the transperency (Don't really care about it either way) but about the *Let's cater to stupid people, because I've seen lots of them* comment.

 

[Roguey]

Yay transparency. That is happy news. For me. That it makes others unhappy makes me happier.

I was less talking about the transperency (Don't really care about it either way) but about the *Let's cater to stupid people, because I've seen lots of them* comment.

Stupid? How unnecessarily insulting. He made this post to address that attitude:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407880122

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.

 

[Infinitron]

Alas, such is the way of the world.

 

[Grunker]

He is defending a BG veteran who didn't fucking buff his party before going into to large fights? What the fuck?

Fuck him. I'm sorry, I'm normally pretty hippie-rainbow, but that is fucking bullshit, and it is the exact definition of appealing to the lowest common denominator he is describing.

He's trying to calm me, but all he is achieving is sounding like the most retarded, typical, streamline-enforcing, dumbing-down, bullshit sentence ever to come out of Todd Howard's mouth.

Weren't we just discussing the vicious circle of quest compassing and dumbing down in the Dishonored thread? Because that is precisely what he is describing.

"You can turn it off/you can ignore it" is just a gigantic cop-out. Because a) you're going to devote development time to making these features, and b) they will permeate the design anyway; case in point the quest compass that can be turned off, but if you do you're rummaging in the fucking blind because no NPC will ever give you directions because the game expects the quest compass to be turned on.

 

[Roguey]

That makes Baldur's Gate look worse than the player imo.
(also games should teach you these things rather than expecting you to just know you're supposed to stack a bunch of buffs before a fight instead of using them as you need them in-battle)

 

[Infinitron]

To be fair, BG didn't have that much in the way of buffs. Spell selection was a bit sparse. Tough combats depended more on item usage.

 

[Grunker]

also games should teach you these things

yeah, figuring out that you should probably cast the long duration buff spell before going into battle is a real fucking stretch on the brain

it's not like a 10-year-old can figure that shit out

anyway, a loading-screen statement saying "remember to buff before going into a fight" should be more than enough (which bg2 had, what a fucking coincidence, eh?), but he is talking about features

he is talking about hand-holding

 

[Jasede]

It's a D&D game. Of course you use buffs.

BG had a lot of buffs; I don't know what you are talking about.

I wouldn't play a game with a loading-screen statement like that. What next, "remember that you can use bow and arrows for long range combat"?

 

[tuluse]

That makes Baldur's Gate look worse than the player imo.
(also games should teach you these things rather than expecting you to just know you're supposed to stack a bunch of buffs before a fight instead of using them as you need them in-battle)

You mean something like having Gorion cast protection from evil on the PC before venturing out into the unknown?

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407881318

the black husserl posted:

The solution to the buff thing is pretty simple in my mind. Keep all the crazy diverse buffs (protection from cotton) but just allow my wizard to group them all together into a meta-spell and cast it all at once.​

I think that is a good way to do it. You essentially configure a protective/buff suite and just BOOYAH it when the time is right.

 

[Infinitron]

BG had a lot of buffs; I don't know what you are talking about.

Enough to cast for six rounds?

 

[Roguey]

also games should teach you these things

yeah, figuring out that you should probably cast the long duration buff spell before going into battle is a real fucking stretch on the brain

it's not like a 10-year-old can figure that shit out

Some 10 year olds sure. Of course

Even among hardcore PC RPG fans, there is a wide spectrum of skill, experience, and preference.

anyway, a loading-screen statement saying "remember to buff before going into a fight" should be more than enough (which bg2 had, what a fucking coincidence, eh?), but he is talking about features

he is talking about hand-holding

If people need 'em, they need 'em. Consider yourself lucky he values giving you the ability to turn them off.

That makes Baldur's Gate look worse than the player imo.
(also games should teach you these things rather than expecting you to just know you're supposed to stack a bunch of buffs before a fight instead of using them as you need them in-battle)

You mean something like having Gorion cast protection from evil on the PC before venturing out into the unknown?

Perhaps a bit too subtle. Anway that was BG (which apparently did not ever require pre-buffing to complete) and this was Icewind Dale. Which apparently did not require pre-buffing until the very last chapter.

 

[Jasede]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407881318

the black husserl posted:

The solution to the buff thing is pretty simple in my mind. Keep all the crazy diverse buffs (protection from cotton) but just allow my wizard to group them all together into a meta-spell and cast it all at once.​

I think that is a good way to do it. You essentially configure a protective/buff suite and just BOOYAH it when the time is right.

They wouldn't figure out how to configure a suite. Hell, people I knew in real life couldn't figure out how to use the Sequencer metamagic in BG 2.
And it's been a while, I admit, but I'd say yeah, enough for six rounds for certain fights, like when you needed elemental protection. There's a shitload of cleric buffs to cast, before and mid-battle. Aid, Prayer, Bless, Protection vs Evil, that's already 4 rounds. Then you have that strength spell and the wizards have to cast protective spells and then you have to haste the party and so on...
Truth to be told I like that kind of annoying micro management. Makes me feel like I'm doing something.

And in BG 2 it went really crazy; buffing with a high level cleric can take forever. Not that it was really ever needed, but...

Edit: I can't stand some of the posts this "rope kid" is making. If someone older than me feels less old school something is off. We want an old-school RPG, don't we? That's why we loved KOTC so much.

 

[Infinitron]

OMG, lots of LARP-fags in that SA thread now. They're a bad influence on him, I tell you

The D&D divide.

And actually it's a problem with both. Attributes are infinitely cruder tools, however. Play RPGs for any length of time and you'll see a lot of people fuck up by making a rogue with high intelligence and strength and then discover that he sucks at all the rogue skills, or make a strong as fuck wizard who can't cast spells because he fucked up and didn't max out int. If you just have attributes, then you still have that problem, because even without an official class, tying attributes to powers fucks up a lot of character concepts. "I want to be an impulsive, unthoughtful priest dude!" welp, too bad you can't cast priest spells because you dumped wisdom for roleplay purposes. "I want to be a spellcaster who is strong as fuck in a world full of shit!" Welp, too bad you traded maxing out the spellcasting attribute for a roleplaying thing that will never benefit you, since none of the STR bonuses will help a spellcaster do anything.

Meanwhile with classes alone, you are free to do whatever. without attributes, you can say "My guy is a wizard, but he casts spells by being so handsome that spirits swoon and do his bidding!" and all you gotta do is write down Wizard under class and HANDSOME GUY under concept and you're gold. With the addition of perks, you can take the perks that fit your concept without sacrificing your core wizard skills.

I've written a lot of stuff about this itt at this point but I want to reiterate: fuck stats forever, death to ability scores.

Still catchin' up~

SO ATTRIBUTES.

The thing is I'm still not seeing what attributes add. Every now and then you get +1 to your Punch People instead of +1 to your Talk To People? That sounds like the most boring fucking thing in the world. I'm a spreadsheet guy and that sounds boring to me.

Take New Vegas. Do you know how often I thought about my attributes after I set them early on? Fucking never. Oh, wait, I bought that Intelligence increase. I'll grant that.

It all just seems like pointless complication. Adding extra numbers and extra things to keep track of for the sake of having extra things to keep track of.

 

[Roguey]

That's not LARPing though because he suggests customization through perks.

Edit: I can't stand some of the posts this "rope kid" is making. If someone older than me feels less old school something is off. We want an old-school RPG, don't we? That's why we loved KOTC so much.

You were expecting something like KOTC from Obsidian? There is not an emoticon I can use to express my laughter, is too inadequate.

 

[Infinitron]

Jasede Well, that's assuming you have all those spells memorized. I admit I prefered to use my clerics for healing and for their limited offensive spells. I was never much of a powergamer though.

 

[Cynic]

So is this game popamole yet?