Pre-release Pillars of Eternity quotes (or: Josh Sawyer writing checks Obsidian can't cash)

[Roguey]

I decided to go through Sawyer's formspring and SA post history for interesting Eternity-related quotes now that it's all said and "done." Posting 'em for posterity, the Sawyer equivalent of what I did to Lesi. Formspring first:

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/do-you-enjoy-mmos-at-all-do/396835425810930683

I don't hate MMOs, but I don't get much enjoyment out of them. I think the last MMO I played was WoW. I played it for about five months after it came out and I don't think I've played any others since then

That's for all of youse who claim PoE is a MMO.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/from-software-has-brought-in/401922617990211908

Without knowing the company culture at From Software, it's hard to know how much influence individual director(s) have. In general, I believe people attribute too much to project directors (or equivalent). The high-level design of the companions and areas in F:NV (outside of the Strip) was entirely mine, as was the entirety of the system design, but I did not do any of the hands-on design for any quest or location, I didn't design the central plot or conflict (that was John Gonzalez), and I only wrote a small number of dialogues (Arcade, Hanlon, Kimball's speech and a few others).

I dictated the overall tone and direction of the setting, story, and system mechanics, but there was a huge team of people responsible for doing the actual design work and implementation. At times, I demanded specific things, like the ability to kill any non-child NPC in the game and still complete the critical path. In most cases, I let the designers have a lot of freedom within a loose outline of what an area was supposed to be. Sometimes the designers convinced me to change the outline of those areas, so in the end, they had more influence over the high-level design than I did.

And this is for those who want to pin Fenstermaker's Folly on Sawyer.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/josh-we-have-rampant/405005098196953890

We're scheduling/budgeting it for the money we received during the Kickstarter. I don't know what that exact figure is, but Feargus would be a better person to ask.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/would-you-describe-your/411492672881051406

When it comes to mechanics, I believe we should design systems that work together to produce challenging gameplay content and a variety of tools players can use to overcome those challenges. If challenges can be easily circumvented by using one skeleton key tactic (whether it's reloading, a singularly overpowering item/ability, or something else), then the gameplay will get boring quickly.

I think gameplay is most enjoyable when there's a balance of frustration and triumph. Without frustration, triumph becomes cheap. Continuous frustration with minimal/infrequent triumph often feels like it isn't worth the effort. Every player has a different balance point for what they enjoy, but if the systems have easy "outs", it can make the challenges trivial.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/hey-josh-you-dont-take-things/414630219383603163

I don't try to make everyone happy, but I do try to communicate what I/we are trying to do and listen to how people respond to that. A consumer can be upset for whatever reason he or she wants. If I think the reason is shared by enough people, I have to at least consider it may be valid. In some cases, we change things (especially if I don't think it's going to cause a negative response from anyone else). In other cases, I accept that they aren't going to like Thing X about the game and we move on.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/as-someone-who-was-not-really/415587351339752905

We're designing the game for people who enjoy the challenge of combat, but different people have different capabilities. If you don't like combat at all, PE will probably not be enjoyable. We consider tactical combat to be a core component of the game. I would like to focus most of our difficulty increases around changing the staging of the encounter, primarily what enemy combatants are present and how they are positioned. At lower levels of difficulty, you will often have fewer enemies to deal with, which can make the challenges less exacting.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/isnt-the-new-damagearmor/418331874348260648

No, because only one tactic is demonstrably inferior. In rock-paper-scissors, all tactics but one are inferior.

If you fight a fire giant in A/D&D, using fire is usually not a valid tactic. You don't have to use cold to beat one. You just can't use fire.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/we-have-not-heard-from-tim/425293422522295628

Tim has been working on some of the basic abilities for the "non-core" classes as well as spell lists. Most of the initial work we did was on "classics" that people might expect when coming to a class. If you play a barbarian, you're probably going to expect to have some sort of rage-y ability. If you play a wizard, you're probably going to expect something resembling a magic missile. There don't need to be a ton of these things and they don't need to mechanically ape D&D, but we want them to be familiar enough to help orient a player at the start of the game.

We've started working on the more PE-world-specific class abilities and spells with other designers (e.g. Avellone and Fenstermaker) contributing ideas.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/a-while-ago-you-said-on-sa/431930710731803606

A while ago you said on SA that PE on Expert/Path of the Damned would be "as difficult as IWD2". Do you stand by that comparison? If so, did you mean IWD2 with HoF mode, or vanilla IWD2? Is there another game you would compare PE to, difficulty-wise?

Icewind Dale 2 in Heart of Fury mode (though that could still vary in difficulty a lot depending on your party build). Yes, I'm still targeting that. With standard difficulty settings/modes, I'd like PE to be in the range of standard Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2.

That definitely changed between then and release.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/have-you-considered-adding-a/449222419308108293

We've talked about it, but for now we're going to see how the rest areas work on their own. Some people on the team believe that if we limit the use of the rest locations it will be excessively punitive.

Knights of the Chalice generally allows players to re-use rest sites, but there's at least one area I remember that doesn't and I saw a lot of negative response to it.

Personally, I do worry about the potential for player dissatisfaction either if resting removes all challenge or if restricted resting makes things too frustrating. In any case, it's something we're going to be looking at and thinking about more as we continue development.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/what-has-changed-since-you/449338379176268793

A lot of the problems I had with BG2 had more to do with specific design choices than with the overall style of the game. Avoiding (or ignoring) the problems I had with it while still having a similar style of game is pretty easy, IMO. Taking the specific things I listed a long time ago:

* CNPCs - Many of their introductions didn't sit well with me and I felt that there were too many who didn't have an equal amount of development given to them. While it was great that so many of them had a ton of quest content, I would have preferred a smaller list of companions with more attention to each one. This is what we said we were going to do at the start of the Kickstarter and it's what we're still planning to do.

* Being required to find/save Imoen - I didn't like it then and I still don't. I wouldn't make the player rescue an NPC with whom he or she may or may not have a positive relationship. It's a very specific plot point and easy to not do. I understand that a lot of people have no problem with the rescue plot, which is totally fine, but I don't think that particular plot point needs to be repeated in PE.

* Style of dialogue - I prefer naturalistic -- some would say "dry" -- dialogue. BG2's characters are much more expressive. This is a personal thing and I recognize that most players *don't* like the same style of dialogue that I do. What I strictly prefer and what I write and have others write are not the same thing. My characters in F:NV are still on the dry end of the spectrum (e.g. Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, Joshua Graham), but there are plenty of more flamboyant, expressive characters in the game that other writers developed.

* Being flooded with quests in Athkatla - To be honest, I don't think is a controversial opinion! I've seen many other players say the same thing. BG2 has a crazy amount of quests, which is great, but the density in Athkatla was a little too crazy. I think those quests should have been spread out or staggered in some other way. PE is going to have more of an exploration focus than BG2 (though not as much as BG), so I believe that will help spread the content out more.

Even though I had those problems with BG2, my job as a lead designer and project director is not to create content that appeals specifically to my tastes. Obviously I would have a difficult time making a game that I *disliked*, but I have (and continue to) push for elements I feel that players will ultimately enjoy even if I'm not super thrilled about it. That's my job.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/what-level-of-difficulty-are/468534200224478667

We're using Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2 for reference. The game is being designed for relatively high difficulty at first and later tuned down for lower levels of difficulty. It's easier to lower difficulty from a high bar than to raise it from a shallow baseline.

That bar turned out to be not so high after all.

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/when-it-comes-to-pe-and/485830337767688019

When it comes to P:E and difficulty, will you make sure that there's a difficulty setting that you, yourself, find interesting enough to play through because it's tactically challenging and not just because it's an Obsidian game? Don't listen to the nubs.

Yes. That's how a lot of the IWD/HoW/TotL/IWD2 encounters were balanced. Kihan (Pak) and I would compare difficulty notes and I would balance my encounters around that. They usually wound up too hard for the average tester, so we dialed them down a bit, but the higher-end/later fights (e.g. Burial Isle) tended to err on the side of increased difficulty.

He listened to the nubs.

And now for SA:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post407541690

A reasonable point, but I will share an anecdote with you. I worked on a fantasy setting that used Syriac and Bulgarian as linguistic starting points. It was a pretty weird world in a lot of ways and the naming didn't help most people get into it. Some really loved it, which I appreciated in a vain sort of way, but the point of communication is to share an idea with someone. If the idea is clever but no one "gets" the feeling you're going for, it's hard to view that as a success.

Funny, considering the reaction to how Pillars uses language.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post407549939

I will be vague right now, but comprehensive game balance and player enjoyment are extremely important to me. I want people to feel like they can make really interesting characters in their own way without being sucker-punched by "gotchas" in the game design.

I think it's important to genuinely capture the feeling of the games we're referencing back to, but that doesn't mean we should ape all of their mechanics directly.

I put it this way to Tim a few weeks ago: I want to capture the feeling an experienced A/D&D player when he or she sets out to make a character and can use interesting combinations of choices to produce something unique, but I want to avoid the feeling a n00blord gets when he or she gets 10 hours into the game and realizes he or she has made a hopelessly "bad" character because the characters have stocked up on ten Skill Focus: Lockpicking feats.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post407551559

I've talked with Tim about this for a while and here's the thing: camping out in the wilderness and setting watches and getting ambushed by jackasses has a great classic A/D&D feel to it, but it got pretty silly in games like IWD2. I'd like to build in reasonable mechanics that make you rest in the wilderness, but I don't want it to result in the sort of degenerate "rest after every fight" stuff we've faced in the past.
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Even in IWD1, regular resting and hyper-buffing were required for some of the later fights in Lower Dorn's Deep. One of the QA testers went berserk trying to get through the area without doing so and ultimately failed.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post407552788

You know what would be cool and is almost never done? Having elves/dwarves/etc come in skintones other than white.

One of our other companions also fits this bill (and isn't a drow/duergar/svirfneblin).

Not after the white-washing she wasn't.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post407698327

There's really a big difference between the needs of party members (or enemies built with party member-type stats, in the D&D sense) and monsters. In many cases, monsters can be extremely simple, not because they're sacks of HP, but because they present a distinct type of threat that is made more complex by allied creatures that present a different type of threat.

Party members are a typically a much different matter due to how varied they can be. I believe both caster types and non-caster types need to have active things to do and they also need to have good default behavior. In IE games, fighter-types effectively just needed to change position and target. Caster types needed to be micromanaged constantly because they were consuming limited resources every round.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post407821330

The weakness I see in most class-based systems that also use ability scores is that certain classes can invariably treat some ability scores as dump stats. Maybe once in a blue moon will you give a shit that your fighter has a 3 Charisma, but in 99.9% of circumstances, it will not negatively affect you at all.

This may sound bad, but I think it's because designers approach ability scores with realism in mind first. Using recent D&D editions as an example, they correlate ability scores with what a person realistically does, only later realizing that while everyone in the party can regularly benefit from AC, Reflex, and Initiative bonuses, most characters can be drooling buffoons, Charisma-wise, and suffer no ill game effects. You can't dump Wisdom because everyone suffers from that. You can't dump Dex because everyone suffers from that. Other stats are easier to dump.

Because different classes have different ability score needs, it produces lopsided/variable utility in the stats (e.g. see how 3E/3.5 designers had to wrestle with bonuses to Strength because even they knew that something was wrong). It also means certain build types are really only beneficial as pure roleplaying/gimmick builds. It's cool that I can RP those characters, but make no mistake: they're pretty bad in the field compared to "normal" builds. Such systems would be no worse for it if the "opt-out" weaknesses of dump stats were addressed at a fundamental level.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post407821495

I don't think AI needs to be complex, but I do believe that tactical threats need to be complex, if that makes sense. You can actually have three different types of enemies using very simple AI in different ways to pose a difficult challenge to the player.

That said, I also liked working on the complex adventurer AI fights in the IE games and I think those are some of the most fun battles in those games. Filler combats are bad. If I could go back and remove 1/3 of the battle content (and areas) from IWD2, I would. There were a lot of solid fights in that game, but a lot of them resulted in drudgery. Even so, I think the best stuff came through when we mixed and matched enemy types that posed different threats to the player. A lot of those fights had simple AI but the enemy placement/reinforcement timing was heavily tuned.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407851261

On a basic level, IE-style. However, a lot of IE conversations had false choice/BS options that I would not want to reproduce today. If there are six genuinely different ways to respond to a node that don't get washed out as soon as the reply is selected, by all means, write away, writers.
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I believe choice should be difficult to be compelling. Two choices that are "equally good" do not produce a dilemma. Two choices that are picked from at random because you can't forecast the consequences of either also do not produce a dilemma. Two choices that clearly give and take away from things that players will value differently, that produces a dilemma. Orestes had a dilemma. Antigone had a dilemma. The consequences of the player's actions do not need to be on par with those of Orestes or Antigone, but the underlying struggle, agony in some measure, should be a goal.

The name of my talk was Do (Say) the Right Thing because I was considering the actions of Mookie at the end of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. He was faced with a dilemma and made a choice that was the right thing for him. That choice still had strong negative consequences, but he accepted them because the alternative would have been worse.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407855368

Putting mundane exposition into dialogue is, IMO, often a huge waste of the designers' and players' time. If conversation is not furthering player or NPC characterization and conflict, I think it's being ill-used. If straight exposition needs to be part of a "proper" conversation, I think it should be split off from whatever the main conflict of the character(s) is. But really, in that case, you've essentially just turned an NPC into an encyclopedia (especially if it's literally something like asking an unnamed character how to get to a location).

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407865717

I think there is more similarity in this project and the IE games than the perspective. I also think you're mischaracterizing my response. They're not boring infodumps because information is boring. They're boring infodumps when they're written in a boring fashion. Filler dialogue should be considered equivalent to filler combat. If a designer is implementing it, he or she should really ask themselves if they're improving the player's experience and understanding of the world and the people in it.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post408259824

I don't agree. If everything is epic, nothing is epic. If each battle is of more-or-less equal in terms of resource applicability, everything proceeds at at a similar pace. Additionally, I've never played in a D&D adventure where the tempo of resource consumption was paced to taper perfectly from the beginning to the end. There are almost invariably two or three (sometimes four) bigger moments within an adventure that encourage an up-tick in resource consumption followed by a strategic rest -- either by retreat or by fortification within the adventure area.

This has applied in every edition of A/D&D I've played, including 4E. Using your dailies is something you really don't want to do on a "lesser" encounter, but sometimes you need to. One of the major 4E differences is that at-will and encounter powers ensure that you can't completely exhaust your capabilities if you wind up in a bad circumstance with no dailies.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post408553211

I would like to personally ask all backers to pause for a moment and think about their contribution and the impact it will have on you. As one of the people who will be using this money to make a game, which is my job, naturally I'm thrilled at all of the funding we are receiving. Still, many of you are backing with large amounts of money, clearly straining at what you're contributing. When all is said and done, it is a piece of entertainment. It may bring you a great deal of enjoyment, but please do not let it create an excessive financial burden for you.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post408840230

When it comes to literature in the world, I think a case can be made for some straight exposition (e.g. a history book), but when it comes to dialogue, I don't think writers do themselves any favors by using characters as encyclopedias. Critics usually slam writers who use character dialogue for straight exposition in any other medium; why should game dialogue be any different?

As an example, Prometheus was one of the most disappointing films I've seen in the past few years for this reason (among others). Characters like Ford (bowl cut Scottish lady) spend their time dryly stating facts. At the end of the film, the most memorable aspect of her character is that she has a bowl cut. That's not a good use of the character's time nor the viewer's, which means that it's not a good use of the writers' or director's time, IMO.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post409094877

One thing I would like to avoid with our system design overall is the development of "blind/harsh" strategy requirements. "Blind/harsh" strategy requirements are the type where you make a choice blind (i.e. without the means to make an informed decision) and the consequences of selecting a poor option are extremely harsh.

A player who understands that heavier armor protects better but makes all of the character's actions slower (for example) has most of the information he or she needs to decide what armor to wear. If I want to be really well-protected, I go with the heavy stuff. If I am not as concerned about taking hard hits, I go with the lighter armor so I can perform all of my actions more quickly. If I then go into an area with hard-hitting enemies, I may be at a disadvantage, but the strategic aspect to which I was "blind" (hard-hitters up ahead) does not have an enormous impact on me because I still gain the advantage of faster actions.

A decision that is highly reliant on protecting against specific damage types is often inherently blind (or metagamey, which I'd argue isn't great) and may wind up being harsh. If you all wear your chain into an area and a dozen dudes with maces pop out, you're probably going to be pretty bummed. But your choice in such a system could only be uninformed unless the player has means of continually divining the content of the areas into which he or she is going. And also, if my chain's advantage is that it's good against slashing attacks, then it really just sucks all around; I haven't gained any advantage from it.

One other thing that I think is important to consider: system design is not just about system design. It's about system and content. A vulnerability to a specific type of attack can only be evaluated in the context of how often that type of attack appears. If you're vulnerable to sonic attacks, congrats: you will rarely (if ever) encounter enemies that exploit that vulnerability. Divisions like slash/pierce/crush and reflex/will/fort are broad and more-or-less evenly encountered. The more niche you get with attack and defense types, the more difficult it becomes to use them as a "real" balancing element.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post409114825

The goal is not to make everyone "happy" because a) it's impossible and b) some people are only happy when their niche is excessively rewarded. E.g. sUpAh SnYpA fans in F:NV were very sad when the x5 crit chance bonus was removed from the Sniper Rifle and Gobi Campaign Rifle even though those weapons were still extremely good in their intended role. It didn't matter to some people. They wanted them to be good in all roles. Well, too bad.

Similarly, if someone wants plate armor to be realistic in PE or they want wearing leather armor to allow you to do 300% more damage than someone in heavy armor, those people aren't going to get what they want. That's fine. We have stated pretty clear goals both internally and externally. As long as we feel that we hit those goals and the majority of players agree, we can't worry about the margins who a) never agreed with those goals or b) don't feel we met them. It's just not a productive way to go about design.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post409361965

Nobody cares about balance until they care about balance. I.e., when the game is more or less difficult than they want it to be. The point of designers doing "work", as opposed to just chucking a bunch of random or default numbers into a data file, is to create a certain range of challenges for players.

I'm not opposed to allowing players to override those values if they really want to, but I don't think that always needs to be available directly in the game, especially when it's an option the player can engage before they've even done anything in the world (e.g. ability score allocation at character creation).

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409514870

I don't like how most ability score/attribute systems are linked to certain class builds. That's something that some people in this thread have also criticized.

I believe ability scores are helpful for defining your character, but I want to set them up so they don't have an overbearing mechanical connection to gear use/your class (e.g. if you use normal melee weapons, raise Strength, if you play a wizard, max out Intelligence). I.e. I would like characters to arrange their ability scores for trade-offs that are meaningful for characters of all classes.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409579525

I'm actually trying to keep things more straightforward and consistent than they are in D&D. Part of that involves segregating subsystems to prevent them from excessively influencing other subsystems. In addition to saving implementation time, it also makes balancing a lot easier.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409755089

GURPS is also arbitrary and insane/faux-realistic with a lot of rules mechanics (e.g. vehicle handling ). From my perspective, I don't particularly care if a mechanic is realistic if it produces shitty gameplay. Ideally, mechanics have enough verisimilitude to not annoy/distract players and they still produce good gameplay choices.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409818423

I don't want to assume that this is the case for the user to whom you were responding, but I have noticed this is A Thing. I.e., if players are not directly rewarded for an action in a game that is ostensibly an RPG, some of them get mad. "Then why would I even do it?" It seems like a very strange reaction to me, because my first instinct is to ask back, "Do you enjoy the act of playing games?"

XP junkies clearly do not.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409858542

It's only a headache if you spend more than 2 seconds considering if you should attempt to make everyone happy. We're not trying to make everyone happy, so it's not a problem.

Irreconcilable differences are just that. If a variety of desires can be accommodated, we'll certainly consider doing it. If we can't, we make the decision that we believe will contribute to making the best game.

Take a hike, grognards.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=410734320

We said we were going to give you three things: a great story with mature themes and meaningful choice, RTwP party-based tactical combat, and the exploration of fantastic environments. Weight- or slot-based inventory management for things you aren't using isn't part of any of that. There is no significant player challenge to shuffling inventory items around outside of combat. At best, the strategic challenge becomes figuring out how to make the fewest trips to carry all of the loot you want out. That's really not much of a challenge and I don't think most players enjoy bouncing off the ceiling of their carry limit every time they find a new piece of gear.

We don't need to immediately convert items to coin because sometimes you stash things (or put them in the top of pack) because you might want to use them later but you accept that you're not going to use them immediately.
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This really sounds like you're picking your personal flavor of verisimilitude. You don't like having an infinite stash of field-inaccessible loot, but you're fine with having IE-style weight limits even thought that typically means characters can carry a dozen weapons and/or two, three, or even four full suits of armor -- and you're also fine if a bandit who wields a longsword and wears leather armor can't be looted for those items after he or she dies.
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The team did not discuss alternatives because no one objected to anything in the system Tim and I proposed. Also, we were trying to solve two problems: forced marching back to merchants and also continual inventory shuffling. Your individual character backpack that was large enough in BG to carry three suits of armor, five longswords, 200 arrows, eight stacks of potions, five scrolls, and assorted gems is now a shared backpack that can hold all of that and more. I'm not going to come up with a lore reason for why it works that way because I don't think the majority of players care. Additionally, I think any lore explanation I would come up with would be absurd. I'd rather just say, "This is how the inventory, pack, and stash systems work," and spend our narrative/world building time on designing interesting areas, characters, factions, and choices for the player to interact with.

Bolding mine for trolling purposes.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post411390794

They're not necessarily always going to be better, since situations will influence your tactics a great deal. If we say that fighters have an inherent Accuracy bonus with melee weapons, that doesn't mean they should never use ranged weapons. D&D often will attack class roles from both ends: incentivizing playing with type and penalizing playing against type. If you've already incentivized playing with type, there's an inherent step down playing against type. If players want to do it, let them do it with a marginal reduction in efficacy.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post411768674

We are bringing new combat mechanics and concepts to the project (though many can be found in non-IE games), but the entirely underlying premise was/us to make something that has an IE game feeling. I've been playing A/D&D pretty much continuously since 1985, so it's not like this was something where I rolled my eyes at the thought of doing it. I liked making IWD, IWD:HoW, and IWD2 and I enjoyed all of the time I spent working on The Black Hound. Making a CRPG using a real-time with pause combat system allows us to make much cleaner mechanics than a straight tabletop port, but it's still important to me (and the backers, I'd say) that the fundamental feeling of the game is very similar to the IE games.

Individuals may become really mad at us leaving in or taking out some thing that they hate/love, but unless the logic of their argument leads me to believe that a significant portion of the backers and future players are going to have a negative experience because of it, the complaint doesn't go very far. That has much less to do with what people say and much more to do with how they play.

Can't say he was wrong, judging by the Steam and Metacritic scores.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post412035387

Most of the world development to date has been done by me and George working with Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Jorge Salgado, and Bobby Null with additional input from other folks at Obsidian. When it comes to writing the actual dialogue, responsibilities will be split (as they always are).

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post412449155

It's not hard, really. It's just complicated. Plenty of people have good ideas that work well enough on their own in the absence of the rest of the game. Professional (or accomplished amateur) designers just (hopefully) have the experience to see trouble coming. I think two of the worst things you can do as a designer are to not think in the context of the game as a whole and to not think in the context of the project as a whole. It's not quite as bad, but still pretty bad, to pay more attention to what players say instead of what they do.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=11#post415139901

If we need an action queue, we will implement one. However, I am concerned such a need suggests enemy combat behavior lacks sufficient dynamism to discourage the use of rote actions. I.e., if you are regularly queuing a sequence of 3 or 4+ actions, the battlefield must be predictable enough that you do not need to make reactive tactical decisions for that character in units of time smaller than 15+ seconds. For more passive characters (e.g. some fighter builds), this is desirable. If characters like spellcasters (specifically, wizards) are supposed to excel based on flexibility and adaptability, regular use of queued actions suggests that stock strategies suffice in place of reactive tactics.
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Why is it necessary to have a queue? The combat-focused IE games all had six character parties and certainly did not demand an action queue. The elements that would have most benefited from a queue were the elements many of us seem to oppose, i.e. rote buff casting.
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Please re-read what I've posted. If we need to implement an action queue, we will implement it when it becomes required. There's no point to having any design philosophy at all if you're not going to put any effort into actually implementing systems and content that reflect it.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post416949381

We're not going to do things to intentionally antagonize or ignore the backers (or our audience in general), but we're also not asking them to design the game as though a) they all had a combined voice that showed a clear consensus and b) that if they did, that consensus would actually make a good game. We do pay attention to feedback and try to adjust when we think it makes sense (e.g. the GUI feedback, despite being all over the place, was very useful). We're designing the mechanics of the game to feel pretty IE-ish, but there are some things we're changing that not everyone will like. Some people don't like the existence of the Stash because they don't like the idea that you can carry everything you find (even if you can't access it). Some people don't like the idea that wizards and fighters are intended to start at similar levels of power and advance at similar levels of power because that's not how the classes work in 2nd Ed. or 3E/3.5. Some people want rogues to be weak in combat and dominate skills while other classes are great in combat and have crappy skills. We're not going to accommodate any of those wishes because we (honestly, usually I) believe they don't produce good gameplay.

We're going to be adding, removing, and adjusting things all the way through beta and beyond. Some of that will be based on user feedback and a lot of it will be based on internal observations. But when it comes to the basics, we don't really need people to help us figure out how to achieve the feeling of games we helped develop in the first place. If bits and pieces are off, I'm sure people will let us know and we'll be able to adjust, but we're not going to get the broad strokes wrong.

A vocal minority disagrees.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post416956256

We're actually not trying to create mirrored mechanics in how classes advance and gain abilities. That was the approach of 4E and, while perfectly valid, I don't think it's absolutely necessary to make classes feel balanced. Where I think pre-4E spellcasters got out of control wasn't because they had a lot of spells, but because even a handful of high-level spells were tremendously powerful and there really wasn't any equivalent for most non-caster characters. PE spellcasters are designed to give you the feeling of tremendous flexibility that came with 2nd and 3E/3.5 gave mid- to high-level casters, but they aren't going to make the fighter irrelevant, or the rogue irrelevant, etc. Casters aren't going to hit 12th level and flip a switch where they can start chucking "save or die"-style effects while everyone else just keeps swinging swords, for example.

And yet adragan gaze is pretty much that.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post417618370

Classes in A/D&D are much more character-defining than ability scores. Ability scores typically just reinforce what the class does or work against it -- in the latter case, producing a character that does the class' job poorly. This is less horrible in 3E/3.5 than it is in 2nd Edition, but it's still far from ideal. Choosing a non-standard array of ability scores for a given class should not, IMO, be an implicit difficulty modifier.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post417623878

Combat-heavy class-based systems that attempt to achieve class balance are almost universally very far away from being simulationist. I don't think there's any point in trying to squeeze simulation into a genre of systems that are so fundamentally *~ gamist ~* in their mechanics. I think some of the persistent failings of A/D&D come from an insistence on trying to do just that.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post419438405

I'm going to tune the higher levels of difficulty to be like the hardest IWD2/BG2 fights all the time. Standard difficulty will be less difficult, but still challenging.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=16#post420444960

We're still debating the merits of various ammo systems. IWD2 was the pinnacle of absurdity near the endgame with archers' inventories filled with stacks of arrows. Ammunition can be enjoyable as a consumable resource, especially if it's something you can craft, but it can very easily get annoying.

Confirmation that special ammo was planned and cut (because it wasn't a stretch goal).

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=17#post421526909

As project director, one of my responsibilities is keeping the different disciplines working under circumstances of mutual respect. My "home" discipline is design (and I am PE's lead designer + system designer), but I don't let the design department walk all over the other departments. Similarly, I don't let programming ignore or reject design specs, I don't let environment artists change fundamental aspects of area designs, etc. Everyone has a stake in what we're making, everyone has something to contribute, and that doesn't work if departments turn into opposed factions. I've only worked on one project where that happened. It was truly dysfunctional.

Pretty sure that project was Alpha Protocol.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=17#post421780304

PE's dialogue trees are more traditional, in general. I don't care if people mine dialogue trees or not, but we're not designing them to be mined. I try to keep the designers focused on having the characters talk about things that are at least tangentially related to their motives. These can include plenty of side-topics, but I don't want characters to be walking encyclopedias.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=17#post421860980

I rejected the demand for a story mode because the IE games are about bands of killers and tactical combat is a major focus of our game (as it was in the BG and IWD games). Exploring, Conversing, Fighting.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3593502&userid=17931#post423031351

I get what you're saying, but I know too well that falling short can be as damaging as being spread too thin. The first expansion I worked on was Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. It was a modest expansion with a small number of areas and a small number of quests. It was pretty stable when it was released, but it felt short, and cramped, and not fitting with the precedent established by Baldur's Gate, Tales of the Sword Coast, and Icewind Dale.

Pillars of Eternity: Spread too thin.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3593502&userid=17931#post423055293

Combat tuning is literally never finished.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post423365257

There are really two things I want every attribute in PoE to accomplish:

1) If a player makes a character of any class, they can look at the attribute and say, "My character will be significantly better at <SIGNIFICANT_THING> for having raised this attribute."

And less vital, but still important:

2) If a player makes a character of any class, they will look at at attribute and say, "My character will suffer significantly for having dumped this attribute."

Depending on how wild and wacky you get with varieties of attribute bonuses, it becomes more difficult for both of those goals to be accomplished. A/D&D's stats often do not accomplish both of those goals for any given class.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post423392279

What I'm saying isn't based on some sort of objective personal observation of these games in a vacuum, but on interactions I've had with BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, PST, NWN, and NWN2 players almost continuously since 1999. If we were making "a" party-based fantasy game, it would be questionable that we'd even have classes, or if we did have classes, that we'd have abilities. Or limited personal inventories. Or a lot of things. Not doing those things certainly makes a lot of rational sense, but IMO it's a mistake to think of game experiences as being fundamentally about rational thought processes. The reasons people love IE games and want to see IE-gamish-things is because of good feelings and memories they associate with them. There is a certain amount we can deviate in all things and still have people say, "Yes, this has the things I love from those games." -- even if by some more objective measure it is a mechanically superior game.

People got mad about the possibility that there wouldn't be six ability scores. Like, just the number. Before they knew what they were, what they could affect, etc. Is it really important that this game have six ability scores? Taken overall, no. Is it really important, overall, that this feels like an IE game? Yes, very much so. The presence of ability scores (despite the infuriating complications they add to classes), the number of ability scores, the naming of ability scores -- those things contribute to that. There are certain things we feel like we can safely gut and not many people will care. There are no halflings, orcs, or gnomes in PoE. Not many people care. There are elves and dwarves in PoE. Some people do not like this, but a ton of people really like this. Charisma is not an attribute. Most players think it's a stinky stat anyway, so no one really cares if it falls off a cliff.

I know this disappoints some people, but PoE is going to have both classes and attributes (ability scores). Exactly what they're named and exactly what they affect is still flexible. My goals for them are what I said before: every attribute can be bumped for some meaningful benefit for every class and every attribute will inflict a meaningful loss for every class if it is dumped (i.e., there are no "opt out" penalties). Meaningful = more than just the bonuses/penalties to the defenses.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post423392827

That's genuinely cool, but we didn't Kickstart a game called Fuck You: Suck My Dick: Josh Sawyer's Personal Dream RPG Experience where I do whatever I personally think is sound and neat and good. For better or worse, this was pitched as an IE-like game. It's great that you view the experiences as more abstract than the nuts and bolts, but no, people clearly do not trust me/us to make a good game that is significantly mechanically different. And I know from experience that sort of attitude can poison a player's entire reception of the game.

I have had the pleasure to work on a project where I just got to do whatever I wanted and that was pretty cool. I don't know how many people would have played that weird-ass game, but the publisher wasn't really concerned, so I went wild. Very few projects are like that. This project is not like that and I feel like we have never pitched it as though it were.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post423669517

We're trying to avoid going nuts with special ammo types but we haven't designed them yet.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post424511917

If it is not rewarding enough to play on its own, stop playing our terrible game.
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The response was not intended to be snarky, but 100% sincere. If participating in a specific type of core gameplay is not enjoyable on its own, our game is bad and I sincerely encourage people to not engage in it/not play the game. There is one main thing we want to reward with XP in our game: pursuing and completing quests. Our quests are unique, they cannot be repeated, and they typically can be completed in a number of different ways using a number of different gameplay mechanics. If you get tired of talking to people to solve quests, start provoking fights. If you get tired of fighting, start sneaking around. If none of those things are fun anymore, then the game's not fun anymore. I don't want to motivate people to grit their teeth while using gameplay mechanics they hate because there's an XP incentive for doing so.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post425301145

I've been playing A/D&D for 28 years, 2nd Ed. for 11 of those, and this is the first time I've seen someone describe 2nd Ed. as flexible.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post425318196

We are making 11 classes for a broad audience. With every class update we do, someone is upset about how we are developing the classes. Sometimes their concerns can be addressed without fundamentally changing a lot about the class. Other times, we can't.

If you want Obsidian to make a classless skill-based game, I certainly won't object (especially if it's a historical game -- classless skill-based games are what I make and prefer to play on my own time), but those proposals always seem to go over like a lead balloon. The IE games were class- and level-based and I think most of the people who backed the game want classes. The trade-off is that there's no way for us to structure classes in a way that everyone likes. I have known that for as long as I've been working with class-based games.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post425318648

BG2 was built on BG and TotSC -- many years of code development and adapting a known and extensively codified ruleset. We're designing and implementing everything from scratch on a very short timeline.

Relevant bolding. Shouldn't have gone hog wild with all those stretch goals, Absurdian.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=7#post429940039

I think it's a bad idea to define the critical path/spine of the story without the creative lead being on the project. On F:NV I defined a few things: you have to start by being shot in the head and dropped in a grave outside of Vegas (that was actually Avellone's idea in the original pitch, so we stuck with it), you have to finish the game at a battle for Hoover Dam between NCR and Caesar's Legion, the early crit path needs to be primarily information-oriented (i.e., trying to find something step-by-step) so you could skip elements of it, and interacting with factions in the late game needed to involve you speaking to them and understanding/resolving (one way or another) their problems. Everything else was defined by John Gonzalez with help from the rest of the team. I have too much system design and director work to do to drive the crit path. At most I have time for a couple of companions and side-characters.

More proof that PoE's narrative was Fenstermaker's Folly.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=7#post432545584

Many of the decisions on PoE are driven by nostalgia, including but not limited to the game being class-based, having six attributes, a six character party, and RTwP combat.
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I think 4-5 characters is much more manageable for RTwP. If we're just speaking about "Hey what kind of game would you make?" I'd develop something turn-based.

E: Even if it were some sort of Darklands spiritual successor, I'd still go with turn-based.
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I prefer skill-based/classless systems by a wide margin.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post433139727

Please remember that Larian already had a developed game when D:OS went to Kickstarter. The Kickstarter budget was mostly for polish and additional features. There are things that D:OS does that PoE doesn't and there are things PoE does that D:OS doesn't. Each game has its own focus and things the dev teams chose to omit.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=9#post433384610

There is a huge gulf between "perfectly balanced" (never, ever stated as a design goal) and "no bad builds". Yes, you always have to play to the strengths of your build. It's your job to play the game. It's our job to put good and worthwhile options in front of you so more than half the characters you make are viable.

We currently have four stats that all feel important and strong for all classes according to our testers. Yes, it's hard to make all six valuable for all classes. There is no logical reason why we can't figure out solutions for the two outliers. We're not folding space.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=9#post433876183

Whether you prefer turn-based or real-time combat, we were clear for the duration of the KS campaign and all of development that PoE would use a RTwP combat system and that it would not fundamentally differ much from BG/IWD. The places where it does differ (e.g. not using rounds, different attack/defense system, Stamina/Health, few to no save or die effects, few to no hard counters) were noted either during the KS campaign or early in development. There are certainly plenty of things to discuss improving or changing, but the basics are not among them.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=11#post435350893

To elaborate, our XP is all derived out of a relatively small table. We establish tiers of quests (by character level) and allocate a total amount of XP to be spread among all quests marked for that level. In turn, each quest is marked with a given level and as major, standard, or minor. The major/standard/minor classifications determine relative proportion of XP share that the quest gets when all quests are taken into account. So if 28 quests are marked as level 4 and level 4 quests only have 1000xp allocated for them, the per-quest reward is really tiny. We mostly just adjust the allocated XP in each tier and what quests are classified as, level-wise. To accommodate additional sources of XP, we start by determining those fixed-pool allocations and subtract them from the total quest XP. The exploration-related XP is a) not large and b) easy to quantify. The bestiary-related XP is also relatively easy to quantify because we associate total XP per bestiary entry, of which there are a fixed amount. We still have to tune after that basic estimation, but it's not a hard or time-consuming process overall.

We currently track within 1 level of our expected targets for XP acquired over the course of the game, so I'm not too worried about it.

Clearly he should have been.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=11#post436021912

Our dialogue tool allows us to see every place we're making checks of various types and it's easy to filter them in different ways. So if, for example, one type of Disposition is overwhelmingly represented and another is hardly represented at all, we can see that and then look at all of the individual instances to see what's going on.

Literally everything we check for via script can be queried. Race, subrace, sex, class, culture, background, deity, paladin order, dispositions, reputations, attributes, skills, etc.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post438618005

Not every class needs to be appealing to every player. There's a subset of people who say, "I hate priests. I hate support characters." and expect us to get rid of/change all of them because of that. If you don't like them, don't play them. There are ten other classes for you to play in various configurations. If you want a character that dishes out a ton of damage to single targets, play a rogue. If you want a character that's really good at dealing with mobs in melee, play a barbarian. If you want a mixed support/off-tank/light offense character, play a paladin. If you want to coordinate nasty attacks with an animal companion, play a ranger. If you want reliable damage output and the most consistent tanking ability, play a fighter. If you really wish the rogue were actually called "fighter", there's nothing I can do for you.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post438680610

We're a lot more likely to tune existing Talents than add new ones at this point.

There are a few common ways that options fail to appeal to players:

* Fundamentally unappealing. Whatever the math behind the option is, the basic concept of it just doesn't get a player excited. This is okay as long as the lack of appeal isn't widespread among all players.

* Narrow application. The math may be appealing, but the player doesn't see many opportunities for it to come up. The "slayer" type Talents fall into this category for some players, but there are only five creature "types" in PoE (Beast, Spirit, Vessel, Primordial, and Wilder) and they get pretty broad representation. If the application truly is narrow, broadening it can be a solution.

* Mathematically unappealing. This is actually the most basic thing to tune but gets overlooked by a lot of players. There was someone early on who said, "If Might affects all damage, I'm always going to max Might for all characters." I asked him if he would do that even if each point of Might only increased damage by 0.5% and other attributes affected their spheres of influence by 5% or 10% per point. He said no, of course not -- then it would be worthless.

If the idea of an option is appealing and it has a broad enough application, that usually means the answer is simply to tune the math.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post439744778

I'm not sure what you're expecting. Individual creatures are tuned around the idea that their level is "worth" an equivalent PC level for a challenging Normal encounter. E.g., a party of five 5th level characters should be reasonably challenged (but ultimately win out) against a party of five 5th level monsters. That's one of the most straightforward ways we can establish a baseline of equivalency for what a creature's level means. On Hard difficulty, the party should be facing superior numbers in terms of overall levels in one of three ways a) more creatures of the same level b) the same number of creatures but some are higher level or c) fewer creatures who are mostly/all higher level. Whether a) b) or c) are used depends a great deal on the individual level and creatures that make sense there. We can't flood a map with creatures if it's cramped. We can't use a higher level companion creature if the jump in levels is too severe (e.g. Wood, Stone, and Adra Beetles all span several levels).

I can personally test things on Hard, as can Bobby and a few other folks, but most of the other devs cannot. Or rather, they wouldn't really get anywhere. If I listened to them for tuning advice, Hard wouldn't be hard at all.

The areas in the Backer Beta are now being tuned for the final game, so the content across the areas is targeted at different levels. You will likely enter Dyrford around 4th level (though you will probably have six characters, so I should add another BB character). Some of the content is tuned for 4th level, but a good amount is tuned for 5th and higher (e.g. the ogre cave). That means if you dive into certain areas with 4th level characters, things are probably going to be tough for you whether you're on Normal or Hard. Easy really is pretty darn easy almost everywhere IME.
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And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.

There's a huge skill gap between the average Codexer and the average Obsidian designer. The only way they're going to make a good game is if Urquhart greenlights a really small project with Sawyer and maybe two or three other designers who are good at RPGs.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post440012626

Everyone interested in the game is going to bring their own opinions and tastes to the discussion. I think we (OEI) have a real responsibility to make the game a worthy successor to the IE games. This does not mean that it must mimic everything those games do, but it's very important for us to capture the essential spirit. With each new or modified mechanic we introduce, it takes time to work through their integration. Chanters, ranger animal companions, Engagement, resting mechanics, etc. all qualify. We're not going to chuck them out just because a subset of people really don't like them, but we do think about them regularly to find underlying elements that can be adjusted to make the game better for everyone.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post440127010

Pure % DR turns into extra hit points against which there isn't any real tactic. Non-linear scaling -- where you get some abstract armor value like "291" that correlates to a percentage value based on your level and the enemy's level -- is a black box that forces people to reverse engineer what's going on just to make sense of how their bonuses influence how well protected they are. In both of these cases, the general result is that armor doesn't really feel like much of anything. In a system where you have inflating hit point values, percentile reduction also forces the damage values to spike even higher and higher because a greater portion of it is being swallowed by the % reduction. You wind up with endgame scenarios like Fallout 1 and 2, where % DR negates such a huge amount of incoming damage that typically only triple damage armor-bypassing crits (against the eyes, naturally) really get through.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post440240404

Every creative endeavor that ever gets finished is compromised.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post440242959

I try to structure all of our content and feature lists with simple and clear priorities, so while there were some areas, abilities/spells, and features that got cut, there weren't that many and those cuts were not particularly harmful. I would always much rather have us do cuts than have the publisher make cuts. Our internal production staff exists largely to deal with (and alert us to problems with) logistics and prioritization, so for this project the presence of an external publisher was not necessary for development.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=15#post440922261

There's absolutely no way we could have built the number of environments we did at anywhere near the same level of detail in real-time 3D. PoE has way over 100 maps that were made by 3-4 environment artists over the course of the project.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=16#post441301606

IWD2 almost certainly had a much lower budget, but building on top of IWD:HoW/TotLM was way, way, way easier than building everything from scratch.

A lot of people believe that if you can think of something, it will suddenly come into existence and work immediately in the game without anything beyond trivial effort.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=17#post442016586

There are still people who insist only a minority of players rest-spammed in the IE games even though personal admissions and watching people play on YouTube makes it really obvious this wasn't the case.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=19#post442781094

I see a ton of things we could improve about the game/systems, but it's a lot of fun as-is. I'm about 65 hours in on a Hard play through. I'm not doing a complete run but I've done a good amount of the side content. The crit path stuff eventually becomes relatively easy when you're over-leveled and over-geared, but that's pretty much what we expected.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=19#post442787393

A lot, I think. As much as I'd love to keep iterating on various ideas pre-launch, there's a point in development where we're in a difficult tug of war between iteration and bug fixing. It's hard to justify another round of iteration on ideas when you have a big list of broken stuff to fix. Whether it's what Attributes give bonuses to what stats, how certain things are calculated and displayed, how an interface works, or general balance/tuning, there's a lot we can do in patches -- and more safely than we can do just before launch.

And that's it. This could have been more comprehensive with his Obsidian forum posts, but this was a large enough undertaking as it was. I'm sure it would have been mostly repeats of what he said at SA, his true home, anyway.

Update: White March part 1 quotes http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-obsidian-cant-cash.99149/page-5#post-4106485

 

[Shevek]

There's a huge skill gap between the average Codexer and the average Obsidian designer. The only way they're going to make a good game is if Urquhart greenlights a really small project with Sawyer and maybe two or three other designers who are good at RPGs.

I have to agree with you there. Even their QA is fairly clueless. There was a point in beta when Dexterity's usefulness was called into question by Backer Beta players but they were ignored at first since internal QA insisted it was useful. It turns out that Dexterity was bugged and did nothing.

 

[rado907]

I have to agree with you there. Even their QA is fairly clueless. There was a point in beta when Dexterity's usefulness was called into question by Backer Beta players but they were ignored at first since internal QA insisted it was useful. It turns out that Dexterity was bugged and did nothing.

That's... baffling. Why do a beta and gain from the expertise of hundreds of fanatical RPG players when you do not intend to listen to what they are saying?

 

[Lord Carlos Wafflebum]

I have to agree with you there. Even their QA is fairly clueless. There was a point in beta when Dexterity's usefulness was called into question by Backer Beta players but they were ignored at first since internal QA insisted it was useful. It turns out that Dexterity was bugged and did nothing.

That's... baffling. Why do a beta and gain from the expertise of hundreds of fanatical RPG players when you do not intend to listen to what they are saying?

It was during a period of great butthurt. I think that was when most of the beta players had turned on Sensuki over something stupid, and Sensuki being the professional codexer that he is expertly triggered damn near every person on those forums. Needless to say, the devs kinda stopped interacting with us during that period and when people tried to point that stuff out the devs weren't taking us terribly seriously.

 

[Immortal]

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/hey-josh-you-dont-take-things/414630219383603163

A consumer can be upset for whatever reason he or she wants. If I think the reason is shared by enough people, I have to at least consider it may be valid. In some cases, we change things (especially if I don't think it's going to cause a negative response from anyone else). In other cases, I accept that they aren't going to like Thing X about the game and we move on.

Firedorn?

http://new.spring.me/#!/r/a-while-ago-you-said-on-sa/431930710731803606

A while ago you said on SA that PE on Expert/Path of the Damned would be "as difficult as IWD2". Do you stand by that comparison? If so, did you mean IWD2 with HoF mode, or vanilla IWD2? Is there another game you would compare PE to, difficulty-wise?

Icewind Dale 2 in Heart of Fury mode (though that could still vary in difficulty a lot depending on your party build). Yes, I'm still targeting that. With standard difficulty settings/modes, I'd like PE to be in the range of standard Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2.

Totally agree with Roguey.. Not even close.


http://new.spring.me/#!/r/what-has-changed-since-you/449338379176268793

A lot of the problems I had with BG2 had more to do with specific design choices than with the overall style of the game. Avoiding (or ignoring) the problems I had with it while still having a similar style of game is pretty easy, IMO. Taking the specific things I listed a long time ago:

* CNPCs - Many of their introductions didn't sit well with me and I felt that there were too many who didn't have an equal amount of development given to them. While it was great that so many of them had a ton of quest content, I would have preferred a smaller list of companions with more attention to each one. This is what we said we were going to do at the start of the Kickstarter and it's what we're still planning to do.

* Being required to find/save Imoen - I didn't like it then and I still don't. I wouldn't make the player rescue an NPC with whom he or she may or may not have a positive relationship. It's a very specific plot point and easy to not do. I understand that a lot of people have no problem with the rescue plot, which is totally fine, but I don't think that particular plot point needs to be repeated in PE.

* Style of dialogue - I prefer naturalistic -- some would say "dry" -- dialogue. BG2's characters are much more expressive. This is a personal thing and I recognize that most players *don't* like the same style of dialogue that I do. What I strictly prefer and what I write and have others write are not the same thing. My characters in F:NV are still on the dry end of the spectrum (e.g. Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, Joshua Graham), but there are plenty of more flamboyant, expressive characters in the game that other writers developed.

* Being flooded with quests in Athkatla - To be honest, I don't think is a controversial opinion! I've seen many other players say the same thing. BG2 has a crazy amount of quests, which is great, but the density in Athkatla was a little too crazy. I think those quests should have been spread out or staggered in some other way. PE is going to have more of an exploration focus than BG2 (though not as much as BG), so I believe that will help spread the content out more.

Even though I had those problems with BG2, my job as a lead designer and project director is not to create content that appeals specifically to my tastes. Obviously I would have a difficult time making a game that I *disliked*, but I have (and continue to) push for elements I feel that players will ultimately enjoy even if I'm not super thrilled about it. That's my job.

Oh GOD - This quote is gold..

* Being required to find/save Imoen Some Random Person you know nothing about

* Style of dialogue - I prefer naturalistic -- some would say "dry" -- dialogue. - No issue here, you nailed dry dialogue in spades

* Being flooded with bad quests in Athkatla Defiance Bay


http://new.spring.me/#!/r/what-level-of-difficulty-are/468534200224478667

We're using Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2 for reference. The game is being designed for relatively high difficulty at first and later tuned down for lower levels of difficulty. It's easier to lower difficulty from a high bar than to raise it from a shallow baseline.

- Or just remove it altogether, I agree with Roguey again.


http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=1#post407541690

A reasonable point, but I will share an anecdote with you. I worked on a fantasy setting that used Syriac and Bulgarian as linguistic starting points. It was a pretty weird world in a lot of ways and the naming didn't help most people get into it. Some really loved it, which I appreciated in a vain sort of way, but the point of communication is to share an idea with someone. If the idea is clever but no one "gets" the feeling you're going for, it's hard to view that as a success.

- Hŵrpa Dwrp




http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407851261

On a basic level, IE-style. However, a lot of IE conversations had false choice/BS options that I would not want to reproduce today. If there are six genuinely different ways to respond to a node that don't get washed out as soon as the reply is selected, by all means, write away, writers.

[Stoic] *Grunts* ...

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post407855368

Putting mundane exposition into dialogue is, IMO, often a huge waste of the designers' and players' time. If conversation is not furthering player or NPC characterization and conflict, I think it's being ill-used. If straight exposition needs to be part of a "proper" conversation, I think it should be split off from whatever the main conflict of the character(s) is. But really, in that case, you've essentially just turned an NPC into an encyclopedia (especially if it's literally something like asking an unnamed character how to get to a location).

So why.. Nevermind

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post408259824

If everything is epic, nothing is epic.

What about anything being epic?



http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=5#post408840230

When it comes to literature in the world, I think a case can be made for some straight exposition (e.g. a history book), but when it comes to dialogue, I don't think writers do themselves any favors by using characters as encyclopedias.

Had to check Roguey's link to make sure the lead designer was saying this.


http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409818423

I don't want to assume that this is the case for the user to whom you were responding, but I have noticed this is A Thing. I.e., if players are not directly rewarded for an action in a game that is ostensibly an RPG, some of them get mad. "Then why would I even do it?" It seems like a very strange reaction to me, because my first instinct is to ask back, "Do you enjoy the act of playing games?"

I think the question I asked was "Why should I explore an area filled with the same painted encounter of drakes and giants if my reward is more bullshit items that make my quick saves take longer when I sell it off to merchants"


http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post409858542

It's only a headache if you spend more than 2 seconds considering if you should attempt to make everyone happy. We're not trying to make anyone but me happy, so it's not a problem.

fixed'

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=410734320

We said we were going to give you three things: a great story with mature themes and meaningful choice, RTwP party-based tactical combat, and the exploration of fantastic environments.

• a great story with mature themes - Atheist Jesus
• meaningful choice - Like Act 3 Ending?
  
• exploration of fantastic environments - MROR OGRES & QWEST CAVES

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...d=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post411768674

We are bringing new combat mechanics and concepts to the project (though many can be found in non-IE games), but the entirely underlying premise was/us to make something that has an IE game feeling. I've been playing A/D&D pretty much continuously since 1985, so it's not like this was something where I rolled my eyes at the thought of doing it. I liked making IWD, IWD:HoW, and IWD2 and I enjoyed all of the time I spent working on The Black Hound. Making a CRPG using a real-time with pause combat system allows us to make much cleaner mechanics than a straight tabletop port, but it's still important to me (and the backers, I'd say) that the fundamental feeling of the game is very similar to the IE games.

Individuals may become really mad at us leaving in or taking out some thing that they hate/love, but unless the logic of their argument leads me to believe that a significant portion of the backers and future players are going to have a negative experience because of it, the complaint doesn't go very far. That has much less to do with what people say and much more to do with how they play.

Can't say he was wrong, judging by the Steam and Metacritic scores.

Objection.
There is no way you can prove that his combat mechanics ideas was the reason this game was successful ignoring all other factors including a huge deficit of this type of game and huge waves of nostalgia running rampant.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=17#post421526909

As project director, one of my responsibilities is keeping the different disciplines working under circumstances of mutual respect. My "home" discipline is design (and I am PE's lead designer + system designer), but I don't let the design department walk all over the other departments. Similarly, I don't let programming ignore or reject design specs, I don't let environment artists change fundamental aspects of area designs, etc. Everyone has a stake in what we're making, everyone has something to contribute, and that doesn't work if departments turn into opposed factions. I've only worked on one project where that happened. It was truly dysfunctional.

Pretty sure that project was Alpha Protocol.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=15#post440922261

There's absolutely no way we could have built the number of environments we did at anywhere near the same level of detail in real-time 3D. PoE has way over 100 maps that were made by 3-4 environment artists over the course of the project.

What made you think you had the resources to make those areas meaningful then?

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=19#post442781094

I see a ton of things we could improve about the game/systems, but it's a lot of fun as-is. I'm about 65 hours in on a Hard play through. I'm not doing a complete run but I've done a good amount of the side content. The crit path stuff eventually becomes relatively easy when you're over-leveled and over-geared, but that's pretty much what we expected.

That's.. Dumb?

 

[Sam Ecorners]

I'm really glad to be a tiny member of a forum with someone as scary as Roguey on it.

 

[felipepepe]

And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.

This is the key, right here.

In Blood Money killing everyone without being seem is an advanced playstyle. Real pros ghost the entire level, and newbs just get to the end no matter what. There you have it, 3 levels of play in the same game, in the same difficulty setting even! But Sawyer didn't understand that. Instead, he made a game where people can succeed at the very first try and then have nothing interesting to challenge them after they understand the system. Instead, all he can do is add annoyances to the basic system, like more enemies, worse stats and removing part of the UI.

 

[Shadenuat]

GURPS is also arbitrary and insane/faux-realistic with a lot of rules mechanics (e.g. vehicle handling ). From my perspective, I don't particularly care if a mechanic is realistic if it produces shitty gameplay. Ideally, mechanics have enough verisimilitude to not annoy/distract players and they still produce good gameplay choices.

Does that mean Roxor's review would now remain official 'dex review forever

 

[roshan]

* Being required to find/save Imoen - I didn't like it then and I still don't. I wouldn't make the player rescue an NPC with whom he or she may or may not have a positive relationship. It's a very specific plot point and easy to not do. I understand that a lot of people have no problem with the rescue plot, which is totally fine, but I don't think that particular plot point needs to be repeated in PE.

Did he even really play Baldur's Gate 2? As far as I recall there were ample dialogue options to indicate that you were just pursuing Irenicus due to him stealing your Bhaalspawn essence, and didn't care at all about Imoen.

 

[Bonerbill]

Did he even really play Baldur's Gate 2? As far as I recall there were ample dialogue options to indicate that you were just pursuing Irenicus due to him stealing your Bhaalspawn essence, and didn't care at all about Imoen.

Yet many NPCS didn't react to that though. Even though I told most npcs that I only wanted to hunt Irenicus, characters like Jan and Keldorn specifically stated that we were searching for Imoen. In Irenicus speech in spellhold, he stated that he used Imoen as bait for you to come, yet you had no opportunity to correct him that. It's pretty obvious the first part of the game is railroading you to save her whether you care about her or not.

 

[FeelTheRads]

That's for all of youse who claim PoE is a MMO.

Him hating MMOs or not didn't stop him from borrowing as much as possible from them, though.

I don't want to assume that this is the case for the user to whom you were responding, but I have noticed this is A Thing. I.e., if players are not directly rewarded for an action in a game that is ostensibly an RPG, some of them get mad. "Then why would I even do it?" It seems like a very strange reaction to me, because my first instinct is to ask back, "Do you enjoy the act of playing games?"

XP junkies clearly do not.

And this is just plain retarded. In other words why don't you want to play a shitty game? Don't you enjoy games?????

 

[Ellef]

All this shows is that Sawyer talks a good game, but until he makes one it's all hot air as far as I'm concerned.

There's a huge skill gap between the average Codexer and the average Obsidian designer. The only way they're going to make a good game is if Urquhart greenlights a really small project with Sawyer and maybe two or three other designers who are good at RPGs..

I would back this game (and probably play it after 12 months of patching it out of alpha). Turn based, classless historical RPG would be great, and he would have no excuses then.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

People are really overusing the nostalgia card these days (I'm not saying nostalgia is not a factor, but its influence is way overblown). I'm not a child, I can certainly identify things I liked (and didn't like) design wise in older games. The notion that the only reason people replay old games is not because some of those games are damn good but because they're junkies desperate for a nostalgia dose is absurd, it's just a way to mask incompetence (and constant desperate attempts to appeal to mass market) and failure to live up to the standard the old games set in a number of ways.

It would also be interesting if Sawyer ever elaborated on what exactly makes classless, attributeless (because they're infuriating! they add complications which hurts Banalce!) systems with unlimited inventories and complete gamist approach to everything a rational, objectively superior approach to design? Because they sure seem like just a bunch of his personal preferences to me.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

 

[Infinitron]

People are really overusing the nostalgia card these days (I'm not saying nostalgia is not a factor, but its influence is way overblown).

It might be more interesting to examine the "nostalgia question" from the opposite direction. That is, not from the direction of "Don't you like that game so much only because it came before this one?" but rather "Would you like that game as much if it came after this one?".

So, put yourself in the shoes of some inquisitive 20 year old who plays PoE, likes it, and then decides to revisit the classics it's based upon.

"What do you mean, there's no stat for making my character attack faster or slower? How can a real-time game not have this?"

"What do you mean, there's no Accuracy stat for spells, spells always hit? This is dumbed down."

"What do you mean, heavy armor makes you harder to hit with no trade-off? This is dumbed down."

"What do you mean, heavy armor makes you harder to hit instead of reducing damage? Shouldn't there be a separate stat for that? This doesn't make sense."

"What do you mean, Wizards have to memorize each individual casting of a spell? This is annoying."

"What do you mean, I can't talk to companions whenever I want? What kind of story-driven RPG is this?"

"What do you mean, only Thieves have skills?"

"What do you mean, there are no Talents?"

"What do you mean, Fighters don't get to do anything except walk around and attack?"

"Seriously, what the fuck is Charisma for?"

I could go on and on.

Of course, we know that those games have hidden depths, but can you expect them to see that? I suppose that new players would think that the concept of multiclassing and kits is pretty cool, but what else?

 

[Morkar Left]

Roguey I really wonder what your real life is about...

 

[Somberlain]

* Being required to find/save Imoen - I didn't like it then and I still don't. I wouldn't make the player rescue an NPC with whom he or she may or may not have a positive relationship. It's a very specific plot point and easy to not do. I understand that a lot of people have no problem with the rescue plot, which is totally fine, but I don't think that particular plot point needs to be repeated in PE.

Did he even really play Baldur's Gate 2? As far as I recall there were ample dialogue options to indicate that you were just pursuing Irenicus due to him stealing your Bhaalspawn essence, and didn't care at all about Imoen.

Irenicus doesn't steal your Bhaalspawn essence until AFTER you've come to Spellhold.

 

[Roguey]

[Stoic] *Grunts* ...

That's not what he's talking about, because that contributes to stoic checks later down the line. He's referring to Bioware-style flavor options where you have three different ways of saying the same thing that all lead to the same dialogue node without alterations.

Objection.
There is no way you can prove that his combat mechanics ideas was the reason this game was successful ignoring all other factors including a huge deficit of this type of game and huge waves of nostalgia running rampant.

Wrong way of looking at it. "a significant portion of the backers and future players are going to have a negative experience because of it" - turns out they did not.

And this is just plain retarded. In other words why don't you want to play a shitty game? Don't you enjoy games?????

There are a lot of games out there where combat doesn't result in an immediate reward of loot or experience. People play them anyway because they enjoy doing so.

 

[dieu]

I find quoting huge walls of text HILARIOUS

Neat

 

[Crooked Bee]

That is a good selection of quotes. Good stalking job, Groguey.

 

[Roguey]

denied

Neat

Yeah, the links are there more for my convenience. To see those posts you need to pay 10 bucks for a SA account and another 10 for the archives upgrade.

 

[Seari]

* Being required to find/save Imoen - I didn't like it then and I still don't. I wouldn't make the player rescue an NPC with whom he or she may or may not have a positive relationship. It's a very specific plot point and easy to not do. I understand that a lot of people have no problem with the rescue plot, which is totally fine, but I don't think that particular plot point needs to be repeated in PE.

Did he even really play Baldur's Gate 2? As far as I recall there were ample dialogue options to indicate that you were just pursuing Irenicus due to him stealing your Bhaalspawn essence, and didn't care at all about Imoen.

Irenicus doesn't steal your Bhaalspawn essence until AFTER you've come to Spellhold.

You do it for teh power up

 

[Sensuki]

[Stoic] *Grunts* ...

That's not what he's talking about, because that contributes to stoic checks later down the line.

It is. It's basically a way of giving a mechanical reason to include BioWare style superfluous options. And pretty much always you just get a different line of dialogue in a conversation or two down the line, it doesn't actually change anything most of the time. Bubbles has a thread with the actual stats of how often that stuff matters, and the answer is not much.

 

[felipepepe]

Of course, we know that those games have hidden depths, but can you expect them to see that? I suppose that new players would think that the concept of multiclassing and kits is pretty cool, but what else?

They would know from multiple sources that those games are fucking classics, and thus try to see what's all this about.

I'm pretty sure that a 20's something today trying DOOM would cry about arrow key movement, no free aiming, lack of a cover system, no need to reload, no regenerating health, holding alt to strafe, no checkpoints, no cutscenes, no backstory, etc... but he's just a damn retard if he goes "muh calofiduty is bettah at everything!".

 

[Infinitron]

Hmm, that's not the analogy I would choose. Can you think of two traditional fast-paced shooters, one of which has more robust mechanics and balance, and the other which people just find "cooler" or which has more elaborate levels or whatever? Quake vs Duke3D maybe, but I'm not sure that quite captures that.