Tasteful Understated Nerdrage/MrBtongue Thread

[catfood]

Dude, read the thread before you post.

 

[Drax]

I enjoyed his recent video about Mass Effect 3 Ending

 

[anus_pounder]

I recently watched his video about PoE and Wasteland 2. I seem to have misplaced the link however...

 

[M. AQVILA]

I agree with most of what MrBtongue said in the recent video. I used to be on the Obsidian forum and the first thing I've noticed after reading some threads and the PoE wiki, was that the game looked bland, sterile and uninteresting. I noticed that they were focusing way too much on balance. The wizard class, my favourite class in D&D, was absolutely boring, as if it was built for a MMO.
Honestly one of the main things I liked about the IE D&D computer games was the variety and uniqueness of the setting, the items, the spells, etc. PoE lacked that, it was completely sterile. The story, the setting, the items, the spells, the skills, the abilities, everything was uninteresting.
As for Wasteland 2, I never finished the game. It was boring, I'm not a fan of the genre and the game wasn't good enough (like Fallout and Fallout 2) to compensate for it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, no. Balance has nothing to do with why PoE and Wasteland 2 are an apex of mediocrity. I usually agree with the guy, but the last video was just ...nothing. We've discussed both titles enough times already, so I won't waste internet space opening that topic again. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with balance.

 

[M. AQVILA]

Yeah, no. Balance has nothing to do with why PoE and Wasteland 2 are an apex of mediocrity. I usually agree with the guy, but the last video was just ...nothing. We've discussed both titles enough times already, so I won't waste internet space opening that topic again. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with balance.

I've read your "Gameplay vs artistic/creative merit" thread. By any chance is the answer creativity? Pillars of Eternity focused more on gameplay instead of creativity. Is that it?

 

[Lacrymas]

I've read your "Gameplay vs artistic/creative merit" thread. By any chance is the answer creativity? Pillars of Eternity focused more on gameplay instead of creativity. Is that it?

You can read all the PoE bitching threads to answer that question :p I made that thread to discuss good gameplay AND good creativity and which is preferable in the long run. The gameplay in both PoE and Wasteland 2 is boring and shit and both are creatively starved. PoE even gets the technical details of writing wrong, so creativity can't even begin to happen. Wasteland 2's gameplay is boring to the point of catatonia. It's also drab and derivative in its setting. The main problem here is that even on technical levels both games fail and balance can only happen if those things aren't fucked up. His point of "overbalance" is inane in of itself. Nobody blames chess for being too balanced. The point of balance is not to nerf/limit overpowered builds, but make more builds viable and by doing so increase the replayability. The chess analogy works here too. It's an immortal game *because* of the balance, not in spite of it. What more can I say? Yes, video games are, by their very nature of gesamtkunstwerk, a work of creative thought and creativity is preferable to non-creativity, but the recent Kickstarter attempts to create RPGs fail on the most fundamental levels. You can't build anything on flawed premises and this is not an exception.

 

[Delterius]

The point of balance is not to nerf/limit overpowered builds, but make more builds viable and by doing so increase the replayability.

All builds were viable in the Infinity Engine games. Which were also replayable beyond counting.

Overbalance is the problem with PoE in the same sense it is the long term issue of all competitive MMOs and MOBAs from which Sawyer draws inspiration in his search for elegant design. They seek to competitively balance the player's options, which lead to homogeneization and the ultimate conclusion of squashing player choice in itself. Every course of action becomes equal and anything that deviates too much from projected performance becomes undesirable.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

The point of balance is not to nerf/limit overpowered builds, but make more builds viable and by doing so increase the replayability.

All builds were viable in the Infinity Engine games. Which were also replayable beyond counting.

Overbalance is the problem with PoE in the same sense it is the long term issue of all competitive MMOs and MOBAs from which Sawyer draws inspiration in his search for elegant design. They seek to competitively balance the player's options, which lead to homogeneization and the ultimate conclusion of squashing player choice in itself. Every course of action becomes equal and anything that deviates too much from projected performance becomes undesirable.

All builds are viable in Pillars too if we have to be pedantic.These games are just easy ,mostly because you are in huge advantage versus the AI unlike in let's say dota.Also non turn based combat present huge problem to design challenging encounters with even small resemblance of working AI,where if TB that would be easier I think.

 

[Delterius]

All builds are viable in Pillars too if we have to be pedantic.These games are just easy ,mostly because you are in huge advantage versus the AI unlike in let's say dota.Also non turn based combat present huge problem to design challenging encounters with even small resemblance of working AI,where if TB that would be easier I think.

Fact remains that the Infinity Engine games were quite replayable, had tons of viable builds while at the same time being incredibly unbalanced. Other issues such as competitive balancing being more desirable in multiplayer games, the fact that TB may be better for encounter design and the fact that both PoE and the IE games are ultimately easy are outside this discussion.

 

[Lacrymas]

All builds were viable in the Infinity Engine games. Which were also replayable beyond counting.

Overbalance is the problem with PoE in the same sense it is the long term issue of all competitive MMOs and MOBAs from which Sawyer draws inspiration in his search for elegant design. They seek to competitively balance the player's options, which lead to homogeneization and the ultimate conclusion of squashing player choice in itself. Every course of action becomes equal and anything that deviates too much from projected performance becomes undesirable.

I never said anything about various builds being unbalanced, I said that the point of balance is to make more builds viable, if some of them are overpowered then whether that's a good thing or not depends on what kind of challenge you want. PoE's combat system is flawed from its conception and more overpowered builds wouldn't have fixed it. Not to mention that some builds can solo the hardest difficulty, so it's obvious they are gimmicky, cheese or overpowered.

 

[Delterius]

All builds were viable in the Infinity Engine games. Which were also replayable beyond counting.

Overbalance is the problem with PoE in the same sense it is the long term issue of all competitive MMOs and MOBAs from which Sawyer draws inspiration in his search for elegant design. They seek to competitively balance the player's options, which lead to homogeneization and the ultimate conclusion of squashing player choice in itself. Every course of action becomes equal and anything that deviates too much from projected performance becomes undesirable.

I never said anything about various builds being unbalanced, I said that the point of balance is to make more builds viable, if some of them are overpowered then whether that's a good thing or not depends on what kind of challenge you want.

Yet, a completely unbalanced videogame has virtually all viable builds within its character system? Obviously a variety of builds stems from the resources the character system puts at your disposal whereas, on the other hand, balancing those resources and designing challenges to accomodate them cuts both ways. You choose what is meant to work and what isn't. On the macro level, you choose in which ways the player is allowed to build his or her characters and party.

This is why when Sawyer talks about a variety of builds he's moreso about giving you more options (such as overhauling the attribute system to allow multiple paths to class excellency ie Intelligent Barbarians and Muscle Wizards) than he is about balancing said options. It is when the systems design draws from online play and searches for a more scaled sort of challenge that those innovations in Pillar's system lose all bite - to borrow from my example, in vanilla PoE the attribute system could have given the player a lot of freedom right off the bat, but it felt like a crippled version of D&D's with attribute values being too close to cosmetic. That is a classic example of when iterative design and balancing waters down the player's options to ensure elegance of design and parity of choices. The overhauls the attribute system suffered through the beta and beyond feel more like the patch process for World of Warcraft than anything.

Balance is required for any kind of worthwhile videogame. But balance as an ideal, in the sense of a MOBA or an MMO, tends to quell creativity in the design process. Instead of figuring out tools and items for the player to use, as well as tools and items with which to fuck the players, the devs become wary of introducing anything too earth shattering. Should anything get past the radar, its best to be patched out as soon as possible.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

I think people here focus waaay too much on Sawyer and balance in Pillars with negativity when it's the most redeeming part of the game.It could be better ofc ,but what makes Pillars huge disappointment is overall bland world,quests,skills,items and some mechanics like stronghold,food and potions.At least the guy is interested in tinkering with numbers and his mind is in the right place.

 

[Delterius]

Naturally, skills and items don't factor into systems design, encounter design and balance? I get that you might care more for quests, dialogue and the integration/improvement of the stronghold, but that's not a reason to dismiss discussions of combat in a combat heavy game. Numenera is the one chasing Planescape: Torment.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Naturally, skills and items don't factor into systems design, encounter design and balance? I get that you might care more for quests, dialogue and the integration/improvement of the stronghold, but that's not a reason to dismiss discussions of combat in a combat heavy game. Numenera is the one chasing Planescape: Torment.

I'm no storyfag ,but what you complain about has nothing to do with balance.IE games had big advantage of using existing D&D with tons of class/build variety and non of them benefit that much from that.Maybe only Icewind Dale because you make your party,but no other IE game has as its biggest strength replayability because of build variety.I say you will have a point if with time and higher levels in future Pillars games they don't put crazy,unbalancing abilities,class skills and items.Like what is so unbalanced and crazy in BG1,+2 weapon with 1-4 bonus damage,hoopty doo.

 

[Lacrymas]

Delterius What you are talking about is creative design though, you can have a character that shoots bees at people, but if its numbers and mechanics don't hold up and aren't viable, then that's also a fail. Balance, like you said, is needed for a worthwhile game, but whether it quells creativity is questionable. That doesn't matter in the case of PoE and WL2 though, they have other problems.

 

[Delterius]

Naturally, skills and items don't factor into systems design, encounter design and balance? I get that you might care more for quests, dialogue and the integration/improvement of the stronghold, but that's not a reason to dismiss discussions of combat in a combat heavy game. Numenera is the one chasing Planescape: Torment.

I'm no storyfag ,but what you complain about has nothing to do with balance.IE games had big advantage of using existing D&D with tons of class/build variety and non of them benefit that much from that.Maybe only Icewind Dale because you make your party,but no other IE game has as its biggest strength replayability because of build variety.I say you will have a point if with time and higher levels in future Pillars games they don't put crazy,unbalancing abilities,class skills and items.Like what is so unbalanced and crazy in BG1,+2 weapon with 1-4 bonus damage,hoopty doo.

There are a number of misconceptions in your post. To them I'd like to point just about any Baldur's Gate forum in the last decade.

People who consistently replayed these games talk about what sort of character and party they'll try next. We are talking about which characters and, yes, which sorts of single, dual and multi class combinations they'll try for their PC -- or bring with them next time. Emphasys on that last part. It isn't just Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 that feature party building (though, for the record, that's, what, nearly half of the IE games?) but also the BGs. You figure out which of the bajillion characters you'll bring with you on your next journey, taking their classes and brokenass special items into consideration. You might be thinking that in the BGs people only cared for personality and such but that is simply not true. Nor would the system lead to that playstyle.

Also, being a storyfag isn't a bad thing.

DelteriusWhat you are talking about is creative design though, you can have a character that shoots bees at people, but if its numbers and mechanics don't hold up and aren't viable, then that's also a fail. Balance, like you said, is needed for a worthwhile game, but whether it quells creativity is questionable. That doesn't matter in the case of PoE and WL2 though, they have other problems.

No I am not. To speak in broad strokes of issues of 'creative design' is just superficial. Anyone at any point can just say 'if only we were more creative, things would be better'. You have to identify issues and discuss them, otherwise there's nothing to note. Its like saying that such and such game needs Better AI or Better Whatever and, well, No Shit.

As it happens, a substantial amount of people have identified one aspect of PoE's design paradigm as source of the problem. The hopes of the game's systems designer for the franchise. In short its "Balance" but, of course, the discussion is more ample than that.

To keep this topical: What BTongue did, I believe, was tackle the issue from a completely different point of view that is characteristic of his channel. He reaches for something deeper than design conventions of what a Old School RPG is and to do so he takes a holistic approach to media that is uncommon in videogame critique. Instead of dismembering a videogame by its mechanics or putting everything into neat little boxes called 'Encounter Design', 'Character System', 'Beastiary' and etc, Btongue puts everything in a melting pot of narrative design. Everything and I mean everything is an exercise in storytelling. There's no segregation of 'gameplay' and story, to partake in the game's combat is to live its world, its characters and its plot. This is what makes his argument interesting.

At first he makes a tried and true comparison of BG2 and PoE. The former is packed with variety and cheese, the latter is cautious and balanced. At this point you might dispute that this is a false opposition. A game can have all or most of the variety in BG2 and still make a better attempt at balancing the player's choices. A theoretical point but fair enough. However, he goes further. His point isn't just one of variety versus balance, but design versus setting. This is when he brings up Wasteland 2 and the emotional abyss between the By Designed Big Choices and the almost par for the course choice that emerged in the middle of the game, the second one being much more impactful than one might think.

This is a hard point to make and I can see how it might be missed, but what we are talking about here is whether in the efforts to deliver an elegant combat system with ever adequate combat challenges we don't end up reverting the RPG genre to its tactical wargaming roots. In a wargame all you need is the terrain and the armies, ideally you won't quest around to find some overpowered magic sword of destiny that ensures heroics and breaks the enemy line. But if you really think about it, if your story is about questing around and stumbling on magical treasure of great value, then there's no problem in some or even a great deal of cheese. Its not just ok for many battles to be easy due to your class, your spells or your items, this even adds to the narrative.

It reminds me of an old point I used to make, that the IE games were actually CRPG/Adventures and that the much reviled 'Puzzle battles' were in fact a seamless way to introduce simple adventure puzzle solving into the combat system. Such a game would be extremely tolerant of cheese, since a key or the answer of a puzzle isn't 'Overpowered' simply for fitting the bill.

Spoiler

What I do is tackle the issue from experience of what the balancing process in games like MOBAs and modern MMOs eventually lead to. The reason why I chose these games for comparison is that not only did the Lead Designer claim these as inspiration of elegant design, but I believe they are the closest to what Pillars of Eternity is attempting. To take a given Universe of tools avaiable at character design and ensure maximum variety of combinations but carefully weighting each possibility against one another, by iterative redesign and patching and only tentativelly adding new content.

This is very much in the same league as the paths that World of Warcraft or League of Legends take as they are required to balance themselves versus player competition. Where, unlike Single Player RPGs, Viability is a matter of whether any character build is AS good as every other, while in CRPGs one plays however he wants.

To make two sets of very long stories short, World of Warcraft started off with character trees, faction variety and etc. Over time, players would figure out a number of inequities within this variety, which, rightfully would be balanced out. They would also figure out different skill allocations that gave them an edge against other players, something that wouldn't do. Eventually, players would figure out entirely new playstyles that the developers never really thought of, but that also wouldn't do. Three expansions in and they not only gave up in adding to the Class Trees but they cut them altogether. MOBAs follow a similar suit, but since its an exclusively PvP affair, it is closer to WoW's Arenas, whereas parity of builds and characters is at best illusory. Every new season, every new patch has its darlings.

All this I feel is close to part of what PoE lived through in its initial stages. The Attribute System is iconic of that but also a foil to both WoW's Character Trees and PvP's illusion of balance. At first, the Attributes achieved their objective of supporting Build Variety but not Equality. Though every class benefited in some way from every attribute, it was clear that some numbers were more overpowered than others and, so, they had to go. What PoE had for the longest time after release (and I haven't played it in months) was, again, a crippled version of D&D's, a pretend layer to character creation that doesn't change much at all.

Now, all that I said so far might be wrong, but its something. Much more than just pointing out to supposed blandness and lack of creativity. I'm speaking of my experience as a player of PoE and many other games and I am critiquing its Rules system.

 

[Lacrymas]

snip

Yes, I agree that we have to identify issues, but you can't identify them if you have everything in a potpourri. The problem isn't identifying non-creativity, that's easy. We've discussed why PoE fails on many more points than just its combat system, so bringing in balance to the whole thing is just another drop in the ocean. Holistic analyses are pointless when the individual parts are flawed. The boxes are there for a reason, and while they are secondary in more advanced artistic mediums (though they are studied separately in universities), they do help with rationalizing the whole. We do shout from the rooftops that we want a "whole experience", yet we still don't know how to make the individual parts, let alone how they fit together. You can't build a stable house with bricks that disintegrate when it rains (or some other fatal flaw). The developers make the same mistakes over and over again, so we really can't move forward while this is going on. The broad stroke I made with "creative design" is because you were talking about a different brick :p

Another point I'm trying to make is that his argument of overbalance just doesn't make sense to me. The lack of cheese and overpowered builds have nothing to do with whether a game is fun or not. Chess is fun, but it lacks any sort of "overpowered" strategies or components, mainly from the perfect balance between the opposing players. Besides, cheese builds only come into play in subsequent playthroughs and can only be a factor in those. When you have stupid mechanics like engagement, more holes than plot, boring characters and many more issues on the very first playthrough the lack of overpowered builds simply isn't a factor. I've played PoE once and I don't intend to play it again, whatever crazy builds they think up next. The only way I can think of to invalidate all this is that I'm not getting what balance means in his context.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

I'd like to point just about any Baldur's Gate forum in the last decade.

People who consistently replayed these games talk about what sort of character and party they'll try next. We are talking about which characters and, yes, which sorts of single, dual and multi class combinations they'll try for their PC -- or bring with them next time. Emphasys on that last part. It isn't just Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 that feature party building (though, for the record, that's, what, nearly half of the IE games?) but also the BGs. You figure out which of the bajillion characters you'll bring with you on your next journey, taking their classes and brokenass special items into consideration. You might be thinking that in the BGs people only cared for personality and such but that is simply not true. Nor would the system lead to that playstyle.

Pillars has way,way bigger party variety than any IE game except ID I/II.Can you make 6 barbarians in BG or P:T?No, you can have one with 6 gazillion thieves.So you and any BG forum are wrong.Pillars could have been D&D copy of the BG2 all the way to spells,abilities and stats and would not have been good game,because the other aspects,been discussed to death already.What annoys me is that obsession with Sawyer and balance been the reason game sucks,fuck that.

Also, being a storyfag isn't a bad thing.

edit: On topic about cheese and OP.Yeah it's fun for 10 min,but in the end it destroys any tactical/strategical play and the game MUST be balanced around that.

 

[Delterius]

Can you make 6 barbarians in BG or P:T?

Yes. You can have whatever you want. People have gone through these games with 6 single classed mages and 6 Fighters. Maybe you lack a basic understanding of the games at hand?

Chess is fun, but it lacks any sort of "overpowered" strategies or components, mainly from the perfect balance between the opposing players.

Alright, let's try something very basic. Should all games be Chess?

 

[Lacrymas]

Alright, let's try something very basic. Should all games be Chess?

I never said anything like that, I just gave it as an example to show how it's perfectly possible to have perfect balance, yet not be ruined by it. The lack of overpowered/cheese tactics/builds have nothing to do with whether it's fun or not is my point.

 

[Delterius]

Alright, let's try something very basic. Should all games be Chess?

I never said anything like that, I just gave it as an example to show how it's perfectly possible to have perfect balance, yet not be ruined by it. The lack of overpowered/cheese tactics/builds have nothing to do with whether it's fun or not is my point.

Good, baby steps. Now, can you imagine how a game about unequal opponents and with unequal builds and tactics might be a fun one?

 

[Jarpie]

Didn't mrbtongue rant against using turn-based combat in TToN?

 

[Delterius]

Didn't mrbtongue rant against using turn-based combat in TToN?

You might be getting your youtubers mixed. One must never forget the Grand Smudboy War.

 

[Jarpie]

Didn't mrbtongue rant against using turn-based combat in TToN?

You might be getting your youtubers mixed. One must never forget the Grand Smudboy War.

Ah yeah, I mixed up those two.