Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[AwesomeButton]

I assumed Rusty means he wants the RPG to be designed around free use of skills on objects in the world and was just giving a separate example.

 

[Grunker]

Having to design a reaction to every possible interaction is as silly as saying all dialogue options that anyone can think of must be presented to the player for a dialogue tree to work.

Why the non-reply? The point I'm making is obvious:

If you want to make a fire spell light up trees and a healing spell start a dialogue interaction, those are two different things you have to figure out how to do.

If you do them via dialogue, it's literally the exact same thing. It's an identical (and extremely short) process of just typing in the interaction in your dialogue editor.

Do you think it took some dedicated, 300 person engineering team to write a script to check if the injured people are healed? Just think of things people would normally do and watch what your playertesters try to do.

No, but you're not talking about one instance of someone being healed. You're talking about doing the amount of interactions PoE/Deadfire has - but via context-sensitive in-world interactions rather than simple dialogue strings.

Surely you agree that it takes less effort to do via dialogue.

 

[AwesomeButton]

unique coding and development effort

that's what's expensive in videogames but free in PnP, as we've mentioned, hence we get the RPGs we get as videogames.

 

[Grunker]

unique coding and development effort

that's what's expensive in videogames but free in PnP, as we've mentioned, hence we get the RPGs we get as videogames.

Yes, that is my point.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Let's take rusty's healing-someone-in-the-world example. To make a game that generally "works like that" you have to utilize a dedicated and expansive development effort to make sure all the assets of your systems that *aren't* dialogue (or at least, enough for it to feel like a way to interact with the game) can be used in a logical manner. You have to:

1) Design abilities, stats and skills around this
2) Always have it in mind/check for it when you look at "stuff in your world" (e.g. someone who needs healing)

With the caveat that I am not a programmer, I don't think this is quite right based on interviews I've read and my own understanding of things. Basically if you have a system, say of hp, you know that if current hp < max hp then healing spell/item will work to increase current hp to <= max hp. You might further have a subsystem that says that if you have healed an NPC that it improves their disposition and with sufficient disposition they may reward you.

Alternatively, you may have a telekinesis spell that can move up to X weight. So long as the items in the world have a defined weight, they may be eligible to be interacted with by this spell.

Basically, the interactions of the designed systems can cause emergent gameplay and interesting situations, rather than a bunch of check X for Y conditions like infinite dialogue checks - which seemed to be what you were describing unless I misunderstood you.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No, but you're not talking about one instance of someone being healed. You're talking about doing the amount of interactions PoE/Deadfire has - but via context-sensitive in-world interactions rather than simple dialogue strings.

Yes. But you're wrong that dialogue is just "simple dialogue strings".
Dialogue in nearly all cRPGs has scripting too, it's in no way just text. Dialogue lines frequently trigger various functions that hook into the scripting system. For a more simplified and well documented example, check the IE .DLG file format documentation(not the .TLK).
I've never bothered to check pillows, but I'm sure they utilize a similar system.

 

[Grunker]

Let's take rusty's healing-someone-in-the-world example. To make a game that generally "works like that" you have to utilize a dedicated and expansive development effort to make sure all the assets of your systems that *aren't* dialogue (or at least, enough for it to feel like a way to interact with the game) can be used in a logical manner. You have to:

1) Design abilities, stats and skills around this
2) Always have it in mind/check for it when you look at "stuff in your world" (e.g. someone who needs healing)

With the caveat that I am not a programmer, I don't think this is quite right based on interviews I've read and my own understanding of things. Basically if you have a system, say of hp, you know that if current hp < max hp then healing spell/item will work to increase current hp to <= max hp. You might further have a subsystem that says that if you have healed an NPC that it improves their disposition and with sufficient disposition they may reward you.

Alternatively, you may have a telekinesis spell that can move up to X weight. So long as the items in the world have a defined weight, they may be eligible to be interacted with by this spell.

Basically, the interactions of the designed systems can cause emergent gameplay and interesting situations, rather than a bunch of check X for Y conditions like infinite dialogue checks - which seemed to be what you were describing unless I misunderstood you.

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that programming in the burning house in Stalwart is as ressource intense with a CYOA as with having it programmed in-world? Mind you, that's having graphics for flames being put out with a range of things, having both skill-based, spell-based and attribute-based interactions with a range of objects not to mention the in-world representation of the house and its changing states itself. *And* that's without mention that once you have the system in place for CYOA-burning-house you can copy paste that for all subsequent interactions - the same is only true of some parts of burning house (like re-using the actual way a spell is "cast" on a world interactable).

Because if you're not, I'm not sure I understand your point, and if you are, well. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about interaction complexities in Pillars.

 

[Grunker]

No, but you're not talking about one instance of someone being healed. You're talking about doing the amount of interactions PoE/Deadfire has - but via context-sensitive in-world interactions rather than simple dialogue strings.

Yes. But you're wrong that dialogue is just "simple dialogue strings".
Dialogue in nearly all cRPGs has scripting too, it's in no way just text. Dialogue lines frequently trigger various functions that hook into the scripting system. For a more simplified and well documented example, check the IE .DLG file format documentation(not the .TLK).
I've never bothered to check pillows, but I'm sure they utilize a similar system.

True, but that's as true for the other interactions - they need to hook into similar things (because they also need to, say, trigger something to happen in a questline or maybe cause a buff to be triggered or whatever). So there's still no parity: in-world interactions obviously take more effort.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Let's take rusty's healing-someone-in-the-world example. To make a game that generally "works like that" you have to utilize a dedicated and expansive development effort to make sure all the assets of your systems that *aren't* dialogue (or at least, enough for it to feel like a way to interact with the game) can be used in a logical manner. You have to:

1) Design abilities, stats and skills around this
2) Always have it in mind/check for it when you look at "stuff in your world" (e.g. someone who needs healing)

With the caveat that I am not a programmer, I don't think this is quite right based on interviews I've read and my own understanding of things. Basically if you have a system, say of hp, you know that if current hp < max hp then healing spell/item will work to increase current hp to <= max hp. You might further have a subsystem that says that if you have healed an NPC that it improves their disposition and with sufficient disposition they may reward you.

Alternatively, you may have a telekinesis spell that can move up to X weight. So long as the items in the world have a defined weight, they may be eligible to be interacted with by this spell.

Basically, the interactions of the designed systems can cause emergent gameplay and interesting situations, rather than a bunch of check X for Y conditions like infinite dialogue checks - which seemed to be what you were describing unless I misunderstood you.

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that programming in the burning house in Stalwart is as ressource intense with a CYOA as with having it programmed in-world? Mind you, that's having graphics for flames being put out with a range of things, having both skill-based, spell-based and attribute-based interactions with a range of objects not to mention the in-world representation of the house and its changing states itself.

Because if your not, I'm not sure I understand your point, and if you are, well. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about interaction complexities in Pillars.

No, I'm saying that I think [as a non-programmer] that the goal is different. That instead of being concerned with programming a one-off scenario such as a burning house that you can interact with in set ways, that you would set up a system for fire which would include a system for extinguishing fire. Maybe fire is an object, maybe it can move or propagate, maybe not, etc. depending on resource constraints and what not. Once this is set up - basically what fire is in the code, then you might use these items to set up a scenario of a burning house with a player left to deal with that or not.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Re: above, from what I've seen of a game like Minecraft, items can burn, lava and water can flow. They have properties and they obey those properties and can be interacted with accordingly. A house that's set on fire can be burned down or extinguished, but it's not a dialog option and it's not about setting up a one off scenario so much as setting up systems that interact in a variety of ways.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No, but you're not talking about one instance of someone being healed. You're talking about doing the amount of interactions PoE/Deadfire has - but via context-sensitive in-world interactions rather than simple dialogue strings.

Yes. But you're wrong that dialogue is just "simple dialogue strings".
Dialogue in nearly all cRPGs has scripting too, it's in no way just text. Dialogue lines frequently trigger various functions that hook into the scripting system. For a more simplified and well documented example, check the IE .DLG file format documentation(not the .TLK).
I've never bothered to check pillows, but I'm sure they utilize a similar system.

True, but that's as true for the other interactions - they need to hook into similar things. So there's still no parity: in-world interactions obviously take more effort.

Doing nothing at all takes no effort, that doesn't mean it's good.

e.g.,

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that programming in the burning house in Stalwart is as ressource intense with a CYOA as with having it programmed in-world? Mind you, that's having graphics for flames being put out with a range of things, having both skill-based, spell-based and attribute-based interactions with a range of objects not to mention the in-world representation of the house and its changing states itself.

BG3 burning inn is far more memorable than the burning ...whatever it was... in WM. If you haven't played BG3, I don't want to spoil it because I liked the encounter.

Spoiler

They are fundamentally the same scenario, except one plays out in text and the other plays out using game mechanics. There's nobody to fight, yet you are even using turn-based "combat" to move through the burning inn and save people, douse fires, avoid smoke/debris, etc.,

If the argument is quantity or quality, I know which side I'm on.

 

[Grunker]

Let's take rusty's healing-someone-in-the-world example. To make a game that generally "works like that" you have to utilize a dedicated and expansive development effort to make sure all the assets of your systems that *aren't* dialogue (or at least, enough for it to feel like a way to interact with the game) can be used in a logical manner. You have to:

1) Design abilities, stats and skills around this
2) Always have it in mind/check for it when you look at "stuff in your world" (e.g. someone who needs healing)

With the caveat that I am not a programmer, I don't think this is quite right based on interviews I've read and my own understanding of things. Basically if you have a system, say of hp, you know that if current hp < max hp then healing spell/item will work to increase current hp to <= max hp. You might further have a subsystem that says that if you have healed an NPC that it improves their disposition and with sufficient disposition they may reward you.

Alternatively, you may have a telekinesis spell that can move up to X weight. So long as the items in the world have a defined weight, they may be eligible to be interacted with by this spell.

Basically, the interactions of the designed systems can cause emergent gameplay and interesting situations, rather than a bunch of check X for Y conditions like infinite dialogue checks - which seemed to be what you were describing unless I misunderstood you.

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that programming in the burning house in Stalwart is as ressource intense with a CYOA as with having it programmed in-world? Mind you, that's having graphics for flames being put out with a range of things, having both skill-based, spell-based and attribute-based interactions with a range of objects not to mention the in-world representation of the house and its changing states itself.

Because if your not, I'm not sure I understand your point, and if you are, well. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about interaction complexities in Pillars.

No, I'm saying that I think [as a non-programmer] that the goal is different. That instead of being concerned with programming a one-off scenario such as a burning house that you can interact with in set ways, that you would set up a system for fire which would include a system for extinguishing fire. Maybe fire is an object, maybe it can move or propagate, maybe not, etc. depending on resource constraints and what not. Once this is set up - basically what fire is in the code, then you might use these items to set up a scenario of a burning house with a player left to deal with that or not.

I still think you misunderstood my point then. I'm not saying you can't reuse the fire-system (in this case). I'm saying you can't reuse that system for a range of other conceivable interactions you might want down the line (well, you can reuse a few parts of it, but I'm sure you understand).

Though in your own way you are hinting at one reason I don't like the interaction-system: it's liable to pebber the world with a lot of awfully convient repeat-instances of using spell X to do Y as the developers reuse interaction systems in an effort to defend spending resources on it.

Re: above, from what I've seen of a game like Minecraft, items can burn, lava and water can flow. They have properties and they obey those properties and can be interacted with accordingly. A house that's set on fire can be burned down or extinguished, but it's not a dialog option and it's not about setting up a one off scenario so much as setting up systems that interact in a variety of ways.

See my response re: wanting a combined Deus Ex + turn-based RPG.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BTW one thing I do remember from the WM burning whatever encounter was that my Eder could use his shield's special ability to emit whatever frost magic it was to put out flames. I liked that.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Rusty is right that if your game has the functionality for "click a spell from the UI, then click on the enemy to cause some effect", then you basically have the functionality for "use an object on another object" even when out of combat.

The difference is in the amount of responses that the developer needs to make sure the game has ready for the player. It's like comparing a command-line interface to a GUI interface where you point and click.

 

[Grunker]

If the argument is quantity or quality, I know which side I'm on.

If it was as binary as your strawman is indicating, sure. But it's not, is it. Could as easily be about having 4 or 5 or 10 interactions or 100 excellent CYOA's + a ton of dialoge reactivity.

BG3 burning inn

Doesn't BG3 have like a million times the budget of PoE or is that me being misinformed?

 

[Grunker]

BTW one thing I do remember from the WM burning whatever encounter was that my Eder could use his shield's special ability to emit whatever frost magic it was to put out flames. I liked that.

I'm cheating by using burning house. It's easily the best CYOA in both games.

 

[AwesomeButton]

BTW one thing I do remember from the WM burning whatever encounter was that my Eder could use his shield's special ability to emit whatever frost magic it was to put out flames. I liked that.

I'm cheating by using burning house. It's easily the best CYOA in both games.

Now imagine that Obsidian had to enable peace-time use of character and item abilities just for cases like that in the expansion. How would that feel as a gameplay shift.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Doesn't BG3 have like a million times the budget of PoE or is that me being misinformed?

The mechanics to make the encounter are essentially present in the divinity engine as of the first Divinity Original Sin game. It's just using a lot of basic mechanics together to create a very interesting encounter.

I'm cheating by using burning house. It's easily the best CYOA in both games.

Were we actually referring to the same thing? woops

 

[mediocrepoet]

Doesn't BG3 have like a million times the budget of PoE or is that me being misinformed?

It wouldn't terribly surprise me to find out that BG3 is the most expensive isometric RPG ever developed.

Though in your own way you are hinting at one reason I don't like the interaction-system: it's liable to pebber the world with a lot of awfully convient repeat-instances of using spell X to do Y as the developers reuse interaction systems in an effort to defend spending resources on it.

Yeah, the more I think about this and the types of things that crop up in games developed with these symptoms, the more I think about overused gimmicks like Larian's elemental fields. I think you make a fair point.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BTW one thing I do remember from the WM burning whatever encounter was that my Eder could use his shield's special ability to emit whatever frost magic it was to put out flames. I liked that.

I'm cheating by using burning house. It's easily the best CYOA in both games.

Now imagine that Obsidian had to enable peace-time use of character and item abilities just for cases like that in the expansion. How would that feel as a gameplay shift.

I'd consider that a win and being unable to use most of your spells/abilities out of combat to be a really bad design decision.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah, the more I think about this and the types of things that crop up in games developed with these symptoms, the more I think about overused gimmicks like Larian's elemental fields. I think you make a fair point.

Yeah, well, dialogue is the elemental fields of IE games.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm fine with PoE's CYOA sections. It doesn't need to be more complicated than it has to be.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm fine with PoE's CYOA sections. It doesn't need to be more complicated than it has to be.

The CYOA bit is really off track of what we were discussing and orthogonal to it tbh.

 

[Grunker]

Doesn't BG3 have like a million times the budget of PoE or is that me being misinformed?

The mechanics to make the encounter are essentially present in the divinity engine as of the first Divinity Original Sin game. It's just using a lot of basic mechanics together to create a very interesting encounter.

If I'm choosing between dialogue which, yes, essentially boils down to a very simple interaction but at least can have humongous variety in the ~*THEATER OF THE MIND FEELS*~ and sim-approximations in the vein of spamming elemental surfaces everywhere, I know where I land.

I see the appeal of DivOS' interactions, but for me they're also a clear warning about what happens when you try to approximate simulations instead of accepting that you're dealing with an abstracting and just building a robust system first - then try to make that system as inoffensive to verisimilitude as you can. The sim-approaches always end up being more of a novelty.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Doesn't BG3 have like a million times the budget of PoE or is that me being misinformed?

The mechanics to make the encounter are essentially present in the divinity engine as of the first Divinity Original Sin game. It's just using a lot of basic mechanics together to create a very interesting encounter.

If I'm choosing between dialogue which, yes, essentially boils down to a very simple interaction but at least can have humongous variety in the ~*THEATER OF THE MIND FEELS*~ and sim-approximations in the vein of spamming elemental surfaces everywhere, I know where I land.

I see the appeal of DivOS' interactions, but for me they're also a clear warning about what happens when you try to approximate simulations instead of accepting that you're dealing with an abstracting and just building a robust system first - then try to make that system as inoffensive to verisimilitude as you can.

...
I just want to use science on computers without the game telling me exactly which one to use it on