Interview Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky on The Outer Worlds at PC Gamer

[luj1]

Remember that this is a RPG for the masses and the masses love having the ability to pass every check in a single playthrough, even if they have to "work" for it. TOW certainly won't be more hardcore than Tides of Numenera or Tyranny in this regard.

TOW certainly won't be more hardcore than Tides of Numenera or Tyranny in this regard.

more hardcore than Tides of Numenera

 

[Roguey]

Tides of Numenera doesn't have a quest compass.

 

[Rivmusique]

metagaming, yucky!

when did this lot get here?

 

[dimi]

Will this game be better than FNV? I say no.

I don't know how people are excited for this. It looks bland AF, as generic as anything else Obsidian has made after FNV. (Stick of Truth excluded, which I don't know enough about to have an opinion on.)

 

[Quillon]

Whenever you guys fail in combat and reload to try again, its technically metagaming, do you guys stop playing when this happens? No? So fuck your hypocrisy, go back to making a character wholly from meta-knowledge in your DnD games.

 

[luj1]

Tides of Numenera doesn't have a quest compass.

And? With or without compass it's easy as fuck

I guess after playing too much PoE your brain rots away and you start saying dumb shit such as putting "hardcore" and ToN in the same sentence

 

[Roguey]

And? With or without compass it's easy as fuck

I guess after playing too much PoE your brain rots away and you start saying dumb shit such as putting "hardcore" and ToN in the same sentence

Pay attention to what I'm saying instead of having knee jerk reactions. Wherever ToN is on the hardcore->casual scale, TOW will lean even more to the casual side.

 

[Fairfax]

Whenever you guys fail in combat and reload to try again, its technically metagaming, do you guys stop playing when this happens? No? So fuck your hypocrisy, go back to making a character wholly from meta-knowledge in your DnD games.

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you. By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

 

[Quillon]

Wherever ToN is on the hardcore->casual scale, TOW will lean even more to the casual side.

Shocking.

 

[Roguey]

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you. By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

People would do these things anyway without options being displayed. See a lock you can't pick? Fine, put more points into lockpicking. Talk to a person and are unable to convince them to do what you want to do? Reload, put more points into speech.

 

[Quillon]

Whenever you guys fail in combat and reload to try again, its technically metagaming, do you guys stop playing when this happens? No? So fuck your hypocrisy, go back to making a character wholly from meta-knowledge in your DnD games.

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you.

When you reload, your character and you know what you are gonna face before you face it, you can devise a better tactic with that meta-knowledge or go level up doing other things and come back to cheese through the fight.

By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

The game just shows what's missing, doesn't tell the player to go read a magazine etc. its up to the player to choose how to go about it. Them being "win" options is better than being random imo in a game where you are allowed to reload. Its not like you have to win any given conversation, you can just choose to forego winning them but if its a fight in crit path that you have to win, you...can't not win

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you. By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

People would do these things anyway without options being displayed. See a lock you can't pick? Fine, put more points into lockpicking. Talk to a person and are unable to convince them to do what you want to do? Reload, put more points into speech.

That approach is the epitome of obtuseness. If lockpicking, bull rushing or stealing leads to the same outcome a la Fallout 3, then the game is basically ignoring what you really did to achieve something. It only offers an illusion of choice of playstyle. AoD does is correct.

 

[Fairfax]

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you. By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

People would do these things anyway without options being displayed. See a lock you can't pick? Fine, put more points into lockpicking. Talk to a person and are unable to convince them to do what you want to do? Reload, put more points into speech.

The lock is different, it's self-evident. If the dialogue checks are hidden, you wouldn't know about the other options or their requirements. You could give it a try anyway, but at least the game wouldn't be promoting it.

 

[Roguey]

The lock is different, it's self-evident. If the dialogue checks are hidden, you wouldn't know about the other options or their requirements. You could give it a try anyway, but at least the game wouldn't be promoting it.

It promotes it by having stat/skill checks that can be used in dialogue. As JES put it

Also, we've already designed in the era of invisible stat checks. They lead to players believing that their statistics actually have no effect on conversations. They literally don't know what they're missing.

In Darklands' Expert mode, greyed out/unavailable options were completely removed. You'd enter an interaction screen and see one or two options, not realizing that there are a ton of other things you could do if you only knew this saint/had that potion/bumped that skill. It's great for people who've already played the game 10 times, but for other people, it removed the impression that those saints/potions/skills had utility outside of their normal systemic use.
...
I'd like to look into options to disable messages of that sort (skill checks, attribute checks, reputation gain and loss), but in practice I think many people will either a) not use them or b) use them only for immersion purposes and metagame around their absence.
...
Like I wrote, I don't have any objections to optionally turning things off, but I have no illusions about how most people actually play these games vs. how they say they want to play them. I've been watching them do it and dealing with the aftermath for ~13 years.

 

[Strange Fellow]

When you reload, the conditions remain the same, and you're still supposed to figure out a successful strategy on your own. You can pause the game and look for walkthroughs, tips, better builds, etc., but the game isn't doing it for you. By showing unavailable dialogue options and offering boosts to enable them, the game is holding the player's hand and offering alternatives they never earned. These are often "win" options, which makes it even worse.

People would do these things anyway without options being displayed. See a lock you can't pick? Fine, put more points into lockpicking. Talk to a person and are unable to convince them to do what you want to do? Reload, put more points into speech.

No one in their right mind would click their way through an entire conversation, then reload and put points into speech on the off-chance there might be some high-speech dialogue option in there somewhere. Get real. It's different when the game communicates to you where exactly those checks are and how many points you need to invest in order to reach them.

Edit: All right, let's see some citations then.

 

[Ismaul]

No one in their right mind would click their way through an entire conversation, then reload and put points into speech on the off-chance there might be some high-speech dialogue option in there somewhere.

I know I do play somewhat like that. When I'm not sure about my choices or I'm curious to see the available options implemented by the designers, I often save before a conversation and reload to see the multiple paths it could take. Playing the "guess what paths/skill checks the designers implemented in this scene" game is no fun for me.

I'd rather see the options I can't take so I can learn what the designers systematically implement in scripted interactions, so I can build my character in an informed manner. I don't mean that I want to cheese to pass every check, I mean I want to make character choices that are reflected and useful in game, and make trade-offs based on that, rather than on the hope that blindly pumping all my points in a skill at the expense of others will eventually be useful.

I also really enjoy knowing that there are paths I could've chosen but didn't. I feel like C&C is in effect there, and that the choices I make are my own. Seeing only one option because I don't have that skills/triggers for the others feels like I have no choice and the game lacks C&C.

So basically having the greyed-out options visible not only enhances my enjoyement of my choices and C&C and make me appreciate more my character build, they also stop me from reloading to see alternate paths because I now already have an idea of what's there. It even makes me want to replay the game to try them out.

 

[Septaryeth]

How hard would it be for them to implement a "hide currently unavailable dialogues or dialgogues requiring higher skill points" option in the setting?

I say let the masses stay brain dead, just give me the option to not see these "friendly reminder" and I'll be a happy story fag.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Of course it would be easy to code that, the question is: do they have any desire to do so?

 

[HoboForEternity]

zone based world >>> fully open world most of the time. unless it's designed like gothic (which world design isn't really always obsidian's strong point or even cain strong point) than bethesda crap.

so yeah, i think it's incline

 

[Quantomas]

No one in their right mind would click their way through an entire conversation, then reload and put points into speech on the off-chance there might be some high-speech dialogue option in there somewhere.

I know I do play somewhat like that. When I'm not sure about my choices or I'm curious to see the available options implemented by the designers, I often save before a conversation and reload to see the multiple paths it could take. Playing the "guess what paths/skill checks the designers implemented in this scene" game is no fun for me.

I'd rather see the options I can't take so I can learn what the designers systematically implement in scripted interactions, so I can build my character in an informed manner. I don't mean that I want to cheese to pass every check, I mean I want to make character choices that are reflected and useful in game, and make trade-offs based on that, rather than on the hope that blindly pumping all my points in a skill at the expense of others will eventually be useful.

I also really enjoy knowing that there are paths I could've chosen but didn't. I feel like C&C is in effect there, and that the choices I make are my own. Seeing only one option because I don't have that skills/triggers for the others feels like I have no choice and the game lacks C&C.

So basically having the greyed-out options visible not only enhances my enjoyement of my choices and C&C and make me appreciate more my character build, they also stop me from reloading to see alternate paths because I now already have an idea of what's there. It even makes me want to replay the game to try them out.

In principle, yes.

But if the content is designed in such a way that you naturally develop an understanding of what can happen, what is worth trying, as for example in KOTOR2, the texture and experience become much more rich. It's a form of art. If you can achieve that without exposing the mechanics to the player, the game gains tremendously.

 

[Wesp5]

If you can achieve that without exposing the mechanics to the player, the game gains tremendously.

Exactly! Also isn't this about how I play my character and not how to get the best options? TOW has Lie, Intimidate and Persuade as far as I know. So if I play a nice character, I would raise Persuasion and ignore the others. What use would it be to see that I could use Intimidate as well if it wouldn't fit to my character? That would indeed only further metagaming...

 

[FeelTheRads]

That would indeed only further metagaming...

But...

go back to making a character wholly from meta-knowledge in your DnD games.

No, you see, when the game shows you how to metagame then it's not metagaming. Similar with how if the game comes with cheats activated by default then it's not cheating.


This is the Newfag Codex.

 

[Black Angel]

ITT, people are trying to justify metagaming

"Reloading to try again after failing a combat encounter = technically metagaming" I think I have a new idea for RPGCodex tagline, guys!

 

[Ismaul]

I don't see the metagaming critique against showing greyed-out options in dialogue. Sure, I could see that a check requires Persuasion and reload before it to put points in the skill. But then in the next dialogue where there's a skill-gated option that is not Persuasion, I can't do that, because my points have been commited already. It is still a character choice that I've made that excludes other options. Showing unavailable possibilities isn't akin to a quest compass or even a cheat, it just tells you the options the GM will allow in specific encounters, since the GM isn't super adaptable unlike in PnP.

There are two cases where it could lead to metagaming. The first is if there's only one skill ever used in dialogues, so putting points in the say Speech skill is like having a win button for dialogue. But still, in that case, points in Speech will mean less points in other things, so it's a meaningful character choice that blocks off other options. The second is if skill difficulties are low, and you're able to pass all or most checks in the game just by knowing what checks happen when and what skill levels are required. But that's just bad RPG design. The fact that greyed-out options are shown is not to blame for such a shit design where you can be a master at everything.

So what's actually the problem of showing unavailable options? Quantomas talks about "texture" and "experience" becoming less "rich". But really what specifically is lost by exposing possible options to the player? And what is gained by hiding them?

One thing is obviously lost by hiding options: the game obfuscates possibilities of interaction from the player, and players can't adapt to how skills are used in this game, see their relevance, their reach, or their impact. A player would have to reload and choose something else to notice the difference. To some, especially if it's hidden that unlocked options are skill-dependant (no [Intelligence] tags for example), it might not even look like there is C&C / alternate choices. One thing is for sure, players won't know the extent of the possible branching because the options are hidden.

One argument for hiding options a player can't choose is immersion; maybe that's what Quantomas is saying. But I feel that's really a matter of preference. I don't feel a loss of immersion if all options are exposed. The opposite, in fact. In knowing that there are other options, I know that my choice matters and makes a difference, if the game's well designed with good C&C for different choices. It also feeds into my fondness for system thinkering, game design etc.

A second argument for not having greyed-out options is player creativity, the possibility for players "to figure out a successful strategy on their own", like Fairfax says. A player can feel clever of unlocking an option by thinking about it beforehand and allocating skills / getting items / doing things to do so. That, I feel, is a better argument. I'm all for it in PnP games. But cRPGs are very limited in the options they provide, and so most of the time creative strategies aren't even implemented, and if they are they aren't systematic at all. Plus, if a lot of the figuring out is simply how much skill points to allocate to a skill, that's pretty terrible as an expression of player creativity to deal with a situation. But if the game truly embraces creative strategies on the part of the player, then sure, something might be lost if those strategies are immediatly exposed on starting a conversation.

A possible solution to this issue would be to partially show greyed-out options: that there is something skill-, item- or action-dependant, but not what it is. For example, [Persuasion option], [Item-dependant option], [Previous choice dependant option], etc., without the dialogue line that goes with it. That might be a good compromise, informing the player of existing options, but still requiring some figuring out.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Writing tag-free dialogue is not about skill checks or metagaming. It is about the writing itself. If the dialogue can not convey what the character is trying to attempt, then no amount of tags or metagames or whatnot is actually improving/harming the game, but rather the writing is doing that. Consider Mass Effect Renegade option where you think Shepard is going to say on the dialogue wheel "No, I reject this offer out of principle" but in-game beats the questioner up. This is, of course, the extreme example. But it communicates the idea. The "intimidate" skill target dialogue should sound intimidating or the diplomatic option should sound mollifying. Then if you include the tag or not, the game automatically provides a way to understand what the character is doing. Even better if the game has Alpha protocol like dossier, where you *learn* from the world what a character likes to hear and then talk that way. AP had tags, remove them and you lose nothing because you can guess from the dialogue (good writing right there!) what the attitude is going to be for the speaker.