The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[aweigh]

Rebalancing weapons in a singleplayer game because you cannot into playtesting it... wait a moment, I thought Sawyer was not involved anymore?

Obsidian. Obsidian never changes...

Rebalancing a weapon in an SP game is not only fine, but it is also essential.

People who think an SP game shouldn't be balanced are crazy: imagine if you create your character in an RPG and immediately after starting someone comes up to you and gives you the best sword and the best armor in the entire game, and you play the entire rest of the game and you never once find something as good... then the game's balance is broken, and now this "SP game" is has become completely unfulfilling to play because large areas of the design have been nullified, you won't have good combat since you begin the game with the best sword and armor and will breeze thru everything, you won't have good exploration because there will never be tension, and you won't have good itemization or a good power curve so the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles will not be present.

When you use an extreme example like that it is painfully obvious that "balance" matters just as much in an SP game as it does in any other kind of game, if not MORE.

 

[Felix]

And sorry to double (kind of triple) post but Xbox has a new tv ad for game pass and Outer Worlds is first boasted

!!!

What's with the soyfaces and smugass wahmen?

 

[Butter]

Game balance is like a puzzle. It's OK for there to be a solution to the puzzle (in fact, that's generally the point), but it shouldn't be easy to discover the solution. When all of your players independently recognize that stealth archer is the best, your puzzle is too easy.

 

[aweigh]

I always like to bring up fighting games when talking about muh balanse:

- in a good fighting game every single character needs to have fully unique move sets, however each move set has to work under specific universal rules. Even if you don't know how to use character A, you should be able to eventually learn why character A can do what he does based off what you've learnt by using character B.

- in a fighting game all of the fighters need to be "fun" to use, and this is incredibly hard to define or explain. Some enjoy doing certain strategies more than others, which is why some like to use a character whose strength lies in throwing projectiles and keeping the enemy "out", while others prefer using a grappler-type who HAS to obligatorily close in: the spectale happens when both players know what the other guy's game plan is, the projectile player knows the grappler player has to "get in", and the grappler player knows the projectile guy will want to "stay out", so this is when the player skill and knowledge of the universal rules comes into play and all sorts of different strategies are employed that the people who designed the character archetypes didn't necessarily take into account.

- and lastly, in a fighting game all characters need to be viable. If there is one character who is obviously and painfully simply better than the other characters, then regardless of how much "fun" you have using one guy, if you want to win you'll use the overpowered/unbalanced/broken characters.

And that last one is the one I think applies closest to he heart of RPG "balance", because you can draw a straight parallel to character builds. Each fighting game character has to be viable yet simultaenously unique and different from each other and no character can be obviously better than any other while still each one being fun to use.

 

[Orma]

 

[Riddler]

maybe. i don't feel like fucking with the game pass service. i might buy TOW for like 15 dollars in a year or something because i'm hoping it'll have an expansion pack with far better quests

It is literally free if you sign up, finish the game within a month and then cancel the service.

 

[Haplo]

Game balance is like a puzzle. It's OK for there to be a solution to the puzzle (in fact, that's generally the point), but it shouldn't be easy to discover the solution. When all of your players independently recognize that stealth archer is the best, your puzzle is too easy.

That's... beautifully put. I wholeheartedly agree!

 

[Lichtbringer]

Now that the patch is finally out to fix a major bug, I can continue playing, but I feel absolutely no motivation to do so.

 

[Efe]

People who think an SP game shouldn't be balanced are crazy: imagine if you create your character in an RPG and immediately after starting someone comes up to you and gives you the best sword and the best armor in the entire game....

there are many games that give you the all powerful or end game viable weapons from the start.
hes right that it tells a lot about their QA when they have to nerf something when they have barely have a dozen unique guns.
also stop being fluent.

 

[Viata]

People who think an SP game shouldn't be balanced are crazy: imagine if you create your character in an RPG and immediately after starting someone comes up to you and gives you the best sword and the best armor in the entire game....

Ultima 7 has the best weapons just at the beginning of the game.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Rebalancing weapons in a singleplayer game because you cannot into playtesting it... wait a moment, I thought Sawyer was not involved anymore?

Obsidian. Obsidian never changes...

Rebalancing a weapon in an SP game is not only fine, but it is also essential.

People who think an SP game shouldn't be balanced are crazy: imagine if you create your character in an RPG and immediately after starting someone comes up to you and gives you the best sword and the best armor in the entire game, and you play the entire rest of the game and you never once find something as good... then the game's balance is broken, and now this "SP game" is has become completely unfulfilling to play because large areas of the design have been nullified, you won't have good combat since you begin the game with the best sword and armor and will breeze thru everything, you won't have good exploration because there will never be tension, and you won't have good itemization or a good power curve so the satisfaction of overcoming obstacles will not be present.

When you use an extreme example like that it is painfully obvious that "balance" matters just as much in an SP game as it does in any other kind of game, if not MORE.

Uhh.... excuse me? If a game hands you an overpowered weapon right at the start that can't be matched with anything that follows, the developer responsible for it should ask himself if he shouldn't better go back to his real dayjob. And that problem should jump into every serious playtester's face right away. You are talking about having balance in a single player game, which is correct, every game should have it. But as a single player game ToW should be already balanced when it comes out. And ToW has a very limited selection of weapons or dmg related skills to take in account.
After that it's not rebalancing, but fixing mistakes they couldn't be bothered with before launch due to running out of time (hello obsidian) and cutting playtesting as a result. You know, the kind of "day one patch" behaviour we are treated with now. "Modders will fix it".
I put emphesis on the single player aspect, because with no multiplayer/pvp the only thing affected is your own experience. Don't want that much dmg? Don't inhale all the drugs. Problem solved.

"Self limitation", the key to getting the most out of your mediocre experience with Bethesda games since Lolblivion.

The joke is on us tho, because I am convinced that one weapon in ToW was "rebalanced" for another reason:
There are only 3 reason big developers seem to bother with bugfixing these days: 1) ingame cash shop not working (mah money!), 2) game crashes on consoles (angry calls from Sony/MS), 3) you can cheese achievments (apparently serious business leading even more angry calls from Sony/MS/Steam).
And this hammer could unlock all the elemental achievements within a matter of minutes, makes you think...

 

[Alphard]

My balanced opinion is that this game is shit

 

[Quillon]

I'm on my second playthrough and haven't found the will to conitinue playing for a week now, if an RPG doesn't compel me to finish it at least twice its shit yeah. Hope they won't waste resources on a DLC for this. And the sequel will be the same if they don't stop/put a leash on this woke brigade in their midst.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Games are shit anyway , read books, watch movies, watch Ancient Aliens, paint, play music, listen music, make photos, sculpt, draw, learn new things, found a family, build a house, take a walk, ride a bicycle, make a trip with family, go outside with your children etc. wasting lives on games is a fuckin sin. Gaming is okay and it's great , but under 6 hours per week.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Not necessarily balance but RPGs are about progressing from weak to strong, so if you start out strong it saps all the fun. I want to effortlessly curb-stomp enemies but only after earning it through trial and struggle.

 

[Wesp5]

Not necessarily balance but RPGs are about progressing from weak to strong, so if you start out strong it saps all the fun.

Indeed. Usually the enemies go from weak to strong too! In TOW the first primals are actually the most dangerous enemies in the whole game, because you don't have any decent weapons then. Afterwards it doesn't really matter, you can swap the weapons around, but normally you won't be in any danger as long as you don't fight stupidly. Which is weird on Monarch because you will probably have killed dozends of Mantiqueens already while Nyoka is still calling them special and difficult . The balance is clearly off, also because of the free weapons and ammo you find everywhere. Speaking of which, why are the lockpicking and hacking tools lying all over the place too, shouldn't they be illegal? The itemisation really looks as if it was done by a random generator...

 

[Bad Sector]

Which is weird on Monarch because you will probably have killed dozends of Mantiqueens already while Nyoka is still calling them special and difficult .

Yeah, i remember this part because

Spoiler

when she said that we need to do all this elaborate setup after i suggested that i can just kill the thing, i expected some sort of special monster or whatever that i really cannot fight "normally". But when the actual fight happened it was just a run of the mill Mantiqueen that i killed in 2-3 swings. It was a total let down and i didn't even used drugs or any special weapons - just some random melee weapon i upgraded several times.

They didn't even bother to at least apply a different shader, double the HP and change the name to something like "Ultra Mantiqueen" - cheapest of the cheap solutions, yet still better than spawning the same monster that respawns randomly just by you walking around the map.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

In TOW the first primals are actually the most dangerous enemies in the whole game

Quite true. Only times I had trouble (playing on hard) was fighting these things and when I took the "Path north of Goodsprings" on Monarch. Rest of the game was piss easy.

Simplifying ammo to only three universal types ruins any possibility of limiting strong weapons by ammo rarity. The game needed some kind of rare combat resource like grenades or something the player would need to conserve, or make the energy weapon ammo specific to each type and *much* more rare.

Funny enough, the endgame can be pretty tough if you go in guns blazing because all the enemies have n-ray weapons that ignore defense. But using the disguise system is so easy it doesn't matter.

 

[LudensCogitet]

Not necessarily balance but RPGs are about progressing from weak to strong, so if you start out strong it saps all the fun. I want to effortlessly curb-stomp enemies but only after earning it through trial and struggle.

Played on hard. Took every flaw I was offered. Didn't notice.

 

[RNGsus]

Cancer.

 

[Danikas]

What's with the soyfaces and smugass wahmen?

this is their target audience.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Such a glow up from last year with Deadfire! Outer Worlds is soo zeitgeist but maybe I'll vote for Disco Elysium just because that game deserves to sell just as well as Outer Worlds and if it wins the awards it will get way more seen!

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Everyone who likes Disco Elysium should be put in a different forum called "NotAnRPGCodex." Or you know, RPGWatch.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

And sorry to double (kind of triple) post but Xbox has a new tv ad for game pass and Outer Worlds is first boasted

!!!

Sometimes, in my dark moments, when I think about all the aborted babies who could've grown up to cure cancer, I remind myself that there are probably many more dismembered fetal Sailor Woedica's; and suddenly the world seems brighter.

 

[Orma]

Early screenshot, Bijou's Revue looks accesible here

So It's cut content after all, probably just like most of byzantium