Editorial RPG Codex Report: A Codexian Visit to OtherSide Entertainment

[Ninjerk]

People just need to chill out with the feature-wishing. Be happy you might get nuUU, because that's what these guys are likely equipped to design--not a ship with every man's wish on board.

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

Food/hunger mechanics are pointless without scarcity. And, really, in a game that is allegedly going to have as much content (in terms of factions and exploration) as this one I don't think it belongs. Stuff like hunger, thirst, and stamina (rest) belong in games that are centered around survival. That is, you have to kill that monster because it's guarding a crate of food you need to eat or you'll stave versus you have to kill that monster because he drops phat lewt.

It adds very little to challenge and ends up being tedious. Trying to shoehorn in a bunch of tertiary mechanics like hunger, insanity, whatever, will only serve to water down the core experience.

You can also use a resource like food to limit how far a player can travel. Have to stay in a radius of a food source sort of thing. I don't get the impression OtherSide wants to do that though.

I like that idea, as an element of survival is necessary to create a compelling simulation. In Thief, the element of suspense was created by making you helpless. In Call of Cthulhu, sanity contributed. Daggerfall would make you fail at level 50 of a dungeon if you ran out of food. Either way, scavenging could play a major role, as could extremes of heat and cold, and essentially any sort of psychological exposure which makes you, by default, vulnerable.

Claustrophobia, for instance, is almost so hand-in-glove to an underground game that it has perfect synergy, and fits thematically.

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

People just need to chill out with the feature-wishing. Be happy you might get nuUU, because that's what these guys are likely equipped to design--not a ship with every man's wish on board.

I hate to be a circle jerk, but it seems they haven't even decided on the engine yet. The game seems to be developing in permutations, where the developers are adding layers in rendition, and still so early in development that the game is open to suggestion, and core mechanics. I'd rather strike at the roots than the branches later on.

 

[Ninjerk]

People just need to chill out with the feature-wishing. Be happy you might get nuUU, because that's what these guys are likely equipped to design--not a ship with every man's wish on board.

I hate to be a circle jerk, but it seems they haven't even decided on the engine yet. The game seems to be developing in permutations, where the developers are adding layers in rendition, and still so early in development that the game is open to suggestion, and core mechanics. I'd rather strike at the roots than the branches later on.

I'm starting to suspect these developers, especially the experienced ones, more-or-less have in mind what features they can reasonably shoehorn into the gametype they're making. It's especially helpful to look towards the higher budget Kickstarters--which of them have really added on to the formula they're selling?

 

[Jaedar]

The problem with using words to describe stats is that they don't really tell you anything specific. Let's say that your Strength is Good but what it means depends entirely on whether Good means 8/10 (Good, Great, Excellent), 7/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic), or 5/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic, Monstrous, Unearthly).

Strongly agree - there has to be some context - and this is perfectly true for numerical systems as well. Saying I have a +45 to hit doesn't mean anything if I don't know what dice are being rolled, and a 4 Strength could mean anything depending on the scale. With a descriptive system, they may choose to simply describe the effects: for example, perhaps an "Acrobatic" character can pole vault while a non-Acrobatic character can't. A Strong character hits harder and does more damage than a Weak one. That's sufficient for the player to be able to make a decision. We don't really need to know that the Strong guy does +4 damage - we can simply see in the game that he kills a spider in one hit while it takes the Weakling five hits to do the same job. (Look at Shock 2 - I had no idea how many hits it would take to kill anything from looking at the numbers.) All that's important is that we know what an adjective means in relative terms. That can be defined numerically, but it really doesn't have to be. Boosting my Standard Weapons skill from Okay to Pretty Good would have told me just as much as 2 → 3 (more, actually)

I don't agree. You are correct that if you don't know what is going on underneath the hood, +37 damage and "you hit harder" have equal descriptive weight, but thats just because both are shitty ways to inform the player.

The thing is that I am somewhat of a powergamer, I want to know the rules behind the game to see how they work so I can make a stronk build. There's also the fact to consider that devs are often not good at or don't care about any sort of balance and so you usually get perks and such that are entirely inferior options, but this is almost NEVER visible in text descriptions.

It is not sufficient information to know more strength == gud. How does strength damage increase compare to high quality weapons? Is it viable to go for a low strength merchant who makes up for it by having really high quality gear? What about having high agility to make more attacks? But then we also need to know if armor and damage reduction is an x% reduction or a threshold or whatever.

Numbers or go home.

 

[Darth Roxor]

UU was an RPG. Thief wasn't. They aren't making a spiritual successor to Thief, are they?

yes and we all remember how robust and complex was the character system of uu

it was practically its most defining feature!

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I don't agree. You are correct that if you don't know what is going on underneath the hood, +37 damage and "you hit harder" have equal descriptive weight, but thats just because both are shitty ways to inform the player.

But what if say training/increasing weapon skill instead of merely adding damage makes you handle weapon better (faster, more fluid swings like in Gothic for example) which is noticeable ingame? As long as you can feel the difference between novice and master swordsman in an actual fight then you'll still have satisfying character progression and worthy skill investments.

Remember, this will not be a full blown RPG but a hybrid with focus on exploration, faction dynamics, emergent gameplay, immersive (I really hate how this has become a dirty word because of AAA crap) world etc. numbers/stats are not as crucial here (and descriptions coupled with noticeable ingame changes can work fine), there's less abstraction.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Too bad they're in denial about this being an action game, the end-result will be a slightly-more-demanding underground Skyrim.

But isn't any game where you play a character an RPG?
It's not you to talk shit about some games while sucking up to others.

 

[Metro]

Claustrophobia, for instance, is almost so hand-in-glove to an underground game that it has perfect synergy, and fits thematically.

Not really. Especially when you're dealing with people who apparently have lived in the environment their entire life. You're just trying to force these mechanics in for its own sake. I'd prefer they focus on the basics first.

 

[Infinitron]

blah

I think you might have a better chance of getting answers to those questions here: http://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?board=3.0

 

[Jaedar]

I don't agree. You are correct that if you don't know what is going on underneath the hood, +37 damage and "you hit harder" have equal descriptive weight, but thats just because both are shitty ways to inform the player.

But what if say training/increasing weapon skill instead of merely adding damage makes you handle weapon better (faster, more fluid swings like in Gothic for example) which is noticeable ingame? As long as you can feel the difference between novice and master swordsman in an actual fight then you'll still have satisfying character progression and worthy skill investments.

Remember, this will not be a full blown RPG but a hybrid with focus on exploration, faction dynamics, emergent gameplay, immersive (I really hate how this has become a dirty word because of AAA crap) world etc. numbers/stats are not as crucial here (and descriptions coupled with noticeable ingame changes can work fine), there's less abstraction.

I don't just want character progression, I want character creation. And how can I create the character I want to, without knowing what my choices do? You say I can notice it when playing, but I want to know what my choices to before I pick them. How else can I know if a choice is valid for my playstyle (or will force/enable me to play another way)?

Also, less numbers/stats => more abstraction. The computer always works with numbers and it is what is running the show. You seeing more text means the actual workings of the world are being more abstracted.

 

[Zombra]

I don't just want character progression, I want character creation. And how can I create the character I want to, without knowing what my choices do?

You know what your choices do. More strength means you hit harder and it will take fewer blows to kill something. You're not wrong to prefer to know that your DPS will go up 9.6% per Strength point, but to insist that anything less is insufficient means that a hell of a lot of RPGs out there are insufficient. Clearly the devs have a more "organic" character building experience in mind, and they (and I) are not wrong for preferring it that way.

People just need to chill out with the feature-wishing. Be happy you might get nuUU, because that's what these guys are likely equipped to design--not a ship with every man's wish on board.

You seem to be referring to hunger mechanics. This is not some pie in the sky idea that came out of nowhere - the devs themselves are talking about wanting survival mechanics in the game, and for the struggle against the environment to be part of the "core experience".

 

[Jaedar]

I don't just want character progression, I want character creation. And how can I create the character I want to, without knowing what my choices do?

You know what your choices do. More strength means you hit harder and it will take fewer blows to kill something. You're not wrong to prefer to know that your DPS will go up 9.6% per Strength point, but to insist that anything less is insufficient means that a hell of a lot of RPGs out there are insufficient. Clearly the devs have a more "organic" character building experience in mind, and they (and I) are not wrong for preferring it that way.

I don't see why you can't get your text, and I can't get my numbers at the same time. Is it so awful if it says "This makes you slightly stronger (+6% melee damage)"?

I definitely find only the text insufficient, and if the game doesn't provide the math I almost always look it up online and I usually find the text to have been misleading and that a lot of perks/skills are made redundant by other choices. That is not easy to say if you can't see the actual math.

You can certainly prefer ignorance(and you are indeed not wrong for doing so), but I would rather know what things actually do.

This post came out a bit more hostile than I intended, but whatever.

 

[Shaewaroz]

Absolutely great interview mindx2, thanks a lot for your efforts.

The team seems to mostly adhere to the kind of game design philosophy one would expect from Looking Glass 2.0, which makes me feel slightly more optimistic about the new Underworld. I'm not sure whether their decision to completely abandon Pen&Paper RPG stats and levels is going to improve the game or is it dumbing down the experience. System Shock was fine without them, but still... Also, the fact that they don't want to make food consumption mandatory for survival (only a hindrance) is slightly concerning to me, since it deminishes the importance of the survival aspect of the game, which I think should be important part of the game.

The three player classes might be interesting if their gameplay is differentiated well enough. They might try going for something similar to Nox: wildly different gameplay, different quests, different character interactions, even different areas accessible to different classes. Nox was of course an ARPG, but it's class distinction and how it affected the gameplay was one of the best I've seen.

 

[Infinitron]

The three player classes might be interesting if their gameplay is differentiated well enough. They might try going for something similar to Nox: wildly different gameplay, different quests, different character interactions, even different areas accessible to different classes.

That's exactly what they're not going for.

They're templates, not classes. Like in System Shock 2.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

This was a good read, and mostly encouraging.

On a side note, I'm almost annoyed at this part:

Paul: One of the things we realized when we launched our Kickstarter was that some of the people looking at the prototype graphics, which we put in big print “PROTOTYPE GRAPHICS.” We spent, oh about three days thinking about making them look good and said OK that’s enough time. Now that’s just the Looking Glass tradition. We, in the early days, for the first half a year of a project didn’t spend any time making it look good. It was just throw something up there because we’re trying to create game play first and for most. But we realized in hindsight there are people who come look at that and say, “This looks like a game from ten years ago. This doesn’t look polished.” So we’re trying to think about how we… for folks who just look at that and draw an immediate conclusion about what the game will come out with. It’s unfortunate because even though game play is honestly the most important to us the game will look gorgeous when it comes out.

...since it's the perfect confirmation of what I was arguing some time ago in another thread.

It comes off as almost naive.
So... People tend to judge the product on what they can see, rather than blindly believing some vague promises from unproved developers who didn't release a game in years.
Also, some degree of care in the presentation is important to pitch a project to a general audience.
Who would have thought it?

 

[Shaewaroz]

The three player classes might be interesting if their gameplay is differentiated well enough. They might try going for something similar to Nox: wildly different gameplay, different quests, different character interactions, even different areas accessible to different classes.

That's exactly what they're not going for.

They're templates, not classes. Like in System Shock 2.

Or in Oblivion?

Of course UU had merely templates as well. I guess what I meant was more about having genuinely different ways to approach gameplay, similarly to what Nox's different classes offered.

 

[Shaewaroz]

The more I read about this interview, the more I realize how successful Arx Fatalis was at recreating UU. In the interview they speak about lighting, which Arx Fatalis did perfectly. Open ended gameplay? Check! Learning about the game world through environmental clues? Check! The implementation of the paper doll? Check! And the list goes on. The only major flaw was the magic system, which wasn't true to UU, as they point out in the interview. I think I have to reinstall Arx Fatalis right away.

If Otherside can create anything comparable to Arx Fatalis, I think they have succeeded.

 

[Haba]

The problem with using words to describe stats is that they don't really tell you anything specific. Let's say that your Strength is Good but what it means depends entirely on whether Good means 8/10 (Good, Great, Excellent), 7/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic), or 5/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic, Monstrous, Unearthly).

And why is that a "problem"? Obscuring the number is a great thing, when you make it a part of your design.

"My character is stronger than an average guy. My opponent looks weak. He is full of openings."

v.s.

"I have 12 STR. My opponent is a level 4 bandit. I have 85% hit chance."

Presuming that both games have equally deep mechanics "under the hood", to me the first example would be more appealing. Not to mention the fact that it opens interesting options, such as a skilled fighter feigning to be full of openings to bait you into a reckless attack. If everything is transparent and specific, there is no element of uncertainty and surprise any more.

A good comparison would be War Thunder GF and World of Tanks. WoT has visible hitpoints and tells you exactly how many points of damage a shot does. WTGF obscures this information. Yet it is the WoT's 25% RNG in damage that people have huge problems with. Even though there is a higher degree of uncertainty in WTGF.

 

[Zombra]

I don't see why you can't get your text, and I can't get my numbers at the same time. Is it so awful if it says "This makes you slightly stronger (+6% melee damage)"?

It's not so awful, but it's also not necessary for every game to do it that way. There are pros and cons to being vague and descriptive, and pros and cons to showing every decimal point of the mechanics. There is a downside to 'mathematizing' everything. It's not strictly a question of "Do it both ways, then everyone's happy"*. They want a more "authentic" experience, which to them means not seeing the numbers attached to everything. You get it; that's just not your preference.

*It can be wonderful when a game puts all the numbers in and then lets you turn them off. Dead Island wasn't great, but the ability to turn off all the numbers was extremely cool. But a low budget game like Ascendant isn't likely to have the throwaway resources to do two different versions and let us choose.

This post came out a bit more hostile than I intended, but whatever.

No offense taken at all. Bros can disagree.

 

[Infinitron]

Deus Ex actually showed you exact numbers for your weapons stats, but it was pretty superfluous. Nice to know, I suppose.

 

[Roguey]

But isn't any game where you play a character an RPG?

It will likely be a role playing game too.

It's not you to talk shit about some games while sucking up to others.

All I'm saying is that it'll play like Skryim. They've made it clear they're not too interested in difficulty, so they better hope they nail the walking-sim parts.

 

[Delterius]

Too bad they're in denial about this being an action game, the end-result will be a slightly-more-demanding underground Skyrim.

With potentially interesting reactivity. Sounds like a good combo actually.

Except that reactivity and 'slightly demanding' run in opposition to everything that Skyrim is.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Great interview mindx2 !

there is a slightly confusing typo you may want to correct though: it says Peter Neurath (instead of Paul) in some of the answers, including to the very first question. Or am I at fault and there is a Peter in the team? I checked twice now and there is no mention of a Peter other than Molyneux.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The problem with using words to describe stats is that they don't really tell you anything specific. Let's say that your Strength is Good but what it means depends entirely on whether Good means 8/10 (Good, Great, Excellent), 7/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic), or 5/10 (Good, Great, Excellent, Heroic, Monstrous, Unearthly).

And why is that a "problem"? Obscuring the number is a great thing, when you make it a part of your design.

"My character is stronger than an average guy. My opponent looks weak. He is full of openings."

v.s.

"I have 12 STR. My opponent is a level 4 bandit. I have 85% hit chance."

If the goal is to help players make informed decisions, numbers work best. If the goal is to make a simulation where player's control and skills are more important than those of your character (i.e. it's about timing you jumps or attacks (a-la Gothic)) than the skill levels don't really matter and words would do a better job simulating a character system.

If for example, a normal jump covers X meters and Acrobatics: Trained covers X*1.5, then you don't need numbers to convey that message. You jump and see that now you can reach places you couldn't before. Same goes for combat if the skill determines not your to-hit-chance but the responsiveness of your controls and the visual speed of your attack.