The Outer Worlds Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Trashos]

B: The charachter creation was already talked about, its going to be in-game similiar to New Vegas.

Edit: Yes, they are going to be available in-game. That's pretty much confirmed.

Where has it been confirmed? Haven't seen anything.

 

[Ismaul]

Why is this exciting again?

GEOMETRIC SHAPES MAN

Behold the building blocks of reality
Now become dimensions of personality

World and Mind, same base blocks
Triangles my man, see what they unlock?

 

[Infinitron]

They've carefully avoided showing us any sort of modal character UI, which is quite remarkable if you think about it. We had 14 minutes of gameplay without ever opening the inventory (even though items were picked up).

Well, I guess the Flaw selection screen counts: https://youtu.be/J3cRpYGVPsU?t=486

 

[Strange Fellow]

It doesn't exist. Stat screen, attributes, none of it. Doesn't exist.

 

[imweasel]

They've carefully avoided showing us any sort of modal character UI, which is quite remarkable if you think about it.

They are obviously scared of the denizens of Codexia. They know we will completely tear that shit apart and analyze it.

 

[J_C]

Why is this exciting again?

GEOMETRIC SHAPES MAN

Behold the building blocks of reality
Now become dimensions of personality

World and Mind, same base blocks
Triangles my man, see what they unlock?

Seriously, the codex is a buncha fangirls. Let's get excited because my favourite developer said something that makes no sense!!!

Which is worse? Those fangirls you spoke of or the edgelords who shit on the concept without even knowing how did they implement it?

 

[Ismaul]

Seriously, the codex is a buncha fangirls. Let's get excited because my favourite developer said something that makes no sense!!!

You think I was being serious?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They've carefully avoided showing us any sort of modal character UI, which is quite remarkable if you think about it. We had 14 minutes of gameplay without ever opening the inventory (even though items were picked up).

Well, I guess the Flaw selection screen counts: https://youtu.be/J3cRpYGVPsU?t=486

probably made an intricate UI full of shapes then saw the backlash right before they decided to show it off

 

[Duraframe300]

B: The charachter creation was already talked about, its going to be in-game similiar to New Vegas.

Edit: Yes, they are going to be available in-game. That's pretty much confirmed.

Where has it been confirmed? Haven't seen anything.

From the start?

Everyone who went to Obsidian has talked about hard numbers (Which is why we know how high attributes and skills go) in their articles + the Flaw Screen shows straight numbered debuffs of -1 to an attribute. Which makes no fucking sense if you as a player don't have any idea about the underlying number. In that case they may as well just use percentages or abstract the effects in any other way. Not to mention skill checks in dialouge use numbers as well.

Add to that, that there is absolutly no indication of the opposite by any material released so far.

Edit: About the charachter generation. I'm not sure, I believe in the podcast or the article. (Basically the game begins with the guy from the trailer looking for a suitable partner on the colony ship. So he goes through the different people he can wake up from cryo. Similiar to New Vegas Doc Mitchell he will make comments depending on your choices.)

 

[Zombra]

They can communicate the stats however they want, it's all just language. Death Road to Canada uses a frowny face to smiley face system and it's exactly as communicative as if they said 1-5. Anyone who insists that statistical information can only be written in numerical form is dumb. "Numbers are pretty", that's all they're saying.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Not really. Numbers "are" the core information. Everything else is dressing for people who prefer the icing. Saying anything else is stupid.

 

[Zombra]

Not really. Numbers "are" the core information. Everything else is dressing for people who prefer the icing. Saying anything else is stupid.

Only if you don't know what a symbol is.

 

[jf8350143]

As most of you will no doubt know, Bioware's Anthem is currently being slaughtered by reviewers. One of the things that received negative attention even by mainstream reviewers (Angry Joe, for example) is the lack of a stats sheet for the character.

I hope that this is taken into consideration. If this doesn't work for the Bioware and EA crowd, how do you think it is going to work for you, Tim?

That game has stats left and right, there is stats on armor, on weapon and on your skills. Yet you don't know shit about your overall stats because you don't have a stats sheet. It's a TPS with a Diablo like loot and progress system, it's all about getting your numbers bigger and bigger.

We don't know anything about outer world yet but I'm pretty sure the game didn't center around getting a armor with a different color to make some numbers become bigger. Also we already see there is a skill check with a specific number required, what makes you think they won't show you the stats of your character?

 

[Trashos]

the Flaw Screen shows straight numbered debuffs of -1 to an attribute. Which makes no fucking sense if you as a player don't have any idea about the underlying number. In that case they may as well just use percentages or abstract the effects in any other way.

We are on the same wavelength. Yes, that wouldn't make sense to me either, but those numbers may be placeholders. Also, I don't know what kind of abstraction for damage would be proper for people who don't like numbers, and therefore I don't know if "shapes (without numbers) in the character sheet/numbers for damage" is an acceptable compromise for them.

Tim has talked in the past (before TOW was officially announced) about moving away from numbers and towards shapes. He had also mentioned that he hadn't decided yet if the numbers should be shown *at all*. That's enough material to make anyone worried.

Additionally, Tim is not a gender studies graduate, he is a prestigious programmer and a nerd. There is a reason why he answered Game Informer's question about numbers with "effectively, yes" instead of just "yes". There is a difference in meaning between the two cases. He knows it, I know it. The simple "Yes" would have answered the question straightforwardly. "Effectively, yes" may mean a lot of different things. For example, the scenario it's really numbers behind it all, you just never see them, is True with "Effectively, yes".

Maybe he wasn't in the mood to get into it or maybe he wanted to keep his options open. Or maybe his tongue slipped in real-time and was vague without meaning to be vague. But the end result is that he didn't answer the question.

 

[Strange Fellow]

What the hell is this? Dots? In my CRPG? Scarcely any numbers at all! I could vomit!

And don't even get me started on Arcanum.

What is this shit on the right? These... bars? Disgusting! What happened to hardcore CRPGs?

 

[Strange Fellow]

Why don't you explain the difference to us, Kit Walker, seeing as it is apparently so obvious to you?

 

[Black Angel]

What the hell is this? Dots? In my CRPG? Scarcely any numbers at all! I could vomit!

And don't even get me started on Arcanum.

What is this shit on the right? These... bars? Disgusting! What happened to hardcore CRPGs?

There are only 5 dots on each of the Attributes, Abilites, and Disciplines. Hovering on each one of them reveal that they influence the numbers appearing on Feats, which are the only numbers that truly matters to the gameplay of Bloodlines. The only plausible explanation as to why it appears like that is because it represent the actual character sheet for Vampire: The Masquerade P&P system.

Meanwhile, there are numbers right below the bars of the skills of Arcanum, from 1 to 5, and you can spend a Character Point to increase those skills by 1.

In no way these system is similar to geometric shapes that Tim Cain supposedly proposed in his talk back then. Of course, if the system would actually be more or less similar to how it worked in Bloodlines/Arcanum, where the shapes still represent numbers in rather straightforward fashion (one dot means value of one, or one fifth of the bar filled means value of one out of five), then I guess everyone can let go a long sigh of relief, but for some reason it seems Tim has been rather vague about how the system is going to look on a sheet and how it's going to convey its information to players regarding how it works.

 

[Trashos]

Why don't you explain the difference to us, Kit Walker, seeing as it is apparently so obvious to you?

The bars in Arcanum are at least easy to translate fast to *exact* numbers. As mentioned above, it's because they are out of 5. When I talk to a friend about my build, I can tell him "I invested 2 points in Throwing" and not "I increased Throwing a bit, towards 50% but a bit less than that". Hopefully you understand the difference and all the ramifications.

That said, personally I much prefer numbers to bars, but it's OK as long as I still have access to exact numerical values. In Arcanum, I do have such access.

You can also see that, bars aside, Arcanum's character screen is still full of numbers.

 

[Zombra]

Why don't you explain the difference to us, Kit Walker, seeing as it is apparently so obvious to you?

The bars in Arcanum are at least easy to translate fast to *exact* numbers. As mentioned above, it's because they are out of 5. When I talk to a friend about my build, I can tell him "I invested 2 points in Throwing" and not "I increased Throwing a bit, towards 50% but a bit less than that". Hopefully you understand the difference and all the ramifications.

That said, personally I much prefer numbers to bars, but it's OK as long as I still have access to exact numerical values. In Arcanum, I do have such access.

That's interesting .. it sounds like you prefer a very granular system, which I guess is OK for some people ... but even when dealing with hard numbers there's nothing wrong with a spectrum. I much prefer the option to invest 48% in Throwing instead of having 0%, 25%, 50%, 100%. Fractions are numbers too.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

It has nothing to do with Granular. Even a bar is *gasp* number below it.

 

[Thonius]

I increased my triangle by two round so now I got tetrahedron at my icosahedron skill. Way better then old boring numbers!

 

[Zombra]

It has nothing to do with Granular. Even a bar is *gasp* number below it.

So certain symbols that you like represent numbers, but anything else does not. Got it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I increased my triangle by two round so now I got tetrahedron at my icosahedron skill. Way better then old boring numbers!

Gotta work on those geodesic polyhedrons before you attempt the tesseract boss.

 

[Strange Fellow]

The bars in Arcanum are at least easy to translate fast to *exact* numbers.

As opposed to what? The "shapes" windmill? Bars are also shapes. I can't even envision a model of shapes without underlying numbers, and easily discernible numbers at that.
I've no idea what this mythical shape looks like to you and Black Angel, but to me it looks something like this thing on the upper left (no, not the face):

This kind of shape is easily readable at a glance, and doesn't preclude complex character development in any way.

As for the concern about Tim Cain's evasiveness on the topic, I've already answered that:

It doesn't exist. Stat screen, attributes, none of it. Doesn't exist.

Why don't you explain the difference to us, Kit Walker, seeing as it is apparently so obvious to you?

The bars in Arcanum are at least easy to translate fast to *exact* numbers. As mentioned above, it's because they are out of 5. When I talk to a friend about my build, I can tell him "I invested 2 points in Throwing" and not "I increased Throwing a bit, towards 50% but a bit less than that". Hopefully you understand the difference and all the ramifications.

That said, personally I much prefer numbers to bars, but it's OK as long as I still have access to exact numerical values. In Arcanum, I do have such access.

That's interesting .. it sounds like you prefer a very granular system, which I guess is OK for some people ... but even when dealing with hard numbers there's nothing wrong with a spectrum. I much prefer the option to invest 48% in Throwing instead of having 0%, 25%, 50%, 100%. Fractions are numbers too.

Funnily enough I disagree with this. I don't like unnecessarily granular systems, since 90% of the time a skill is checked it is measured against a round number (see what I did there?), either due to laziness or just a subconscious propensity for natural breakpoints on the part of the designers. Even in systemic checks outside of dialogue, such as "skill x gives +2% chance to hit", the differences between, say, 22 and 25 in a given skill is usually inconsequential. I much prefer systems where every point counts.

PS: I actually never noticed that the skill bars in Arcanum had numbers underneath.

 

[Black Angel]

The bars in Arcanum are at least easy to translate fast to *exact* numbers.

As opposed to what? The "shapes" windmill? Bars are also shapes. I can't even envision a model of shapes without underlying numbers, and easily discernible numbers at that.
I've no idea what this mythical shape looks like to you and Black Angel, but to me it looks something like this thing on the upper left (no, not the face):

This kind of shape is easily readable at a glance, and doesn't preclude complex character development in any way.

But numbers convey information much more clearly. Also, "doesn't preclude complex character development in any way", you say? What about perk requirements? Weapon skills/stats requirements to use certain equipment? How do we know all these when the all that's shown in the character sheet is some geometric shapes?

This is easily solved by allowing players to gain access to the numbers by simple hovering over the shapes, which is supposedly what Tim Cain considered in one of his post here, but we've had discussion about this before. If the purpose of showing these shapes is to ease people who aren't into RPGs in the first place to play the game, what other part of the game is being affected by this or similar design decision and how much will it impact the final experience? Many people pointed out this concern, and after that no more response from Tim.