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

[Fenix]

It's already clear that Cainarsky game made impressions more on bad side of scale than on good on Codex, and the only thing that could clarify on that subject is actual game, till then it's all wild speculations no matter what...

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Speaking of AoD... I wish games forced you to level up, spend your points, and see where that takes you. Games like AoD, where you are free to allocate your points at any time outside of dialogue, or PoE2 for that matter, where you have a mountain of skill-enhancing equipment and consumables, that invites and encourages the player to savescum to a degree where it becomes a fundamental part of the gameplay.

Allowing you to freely allocate the points actually discourage save scumming. Without storing points you have to reload each time you realize you've made a mistake and that you can't progress normally with your current char. With some points in bank you can go around and feel what challenges are in the next area before committing. Lots of chests you can't open? Raise your lockpicking skill. Get your butt kicked in combat? Time to invest in those martial skills. Running into many skill checks and failing? Better brush-up on your diplomacy. Of course it will lots or reloading if PC dies because of the lack of skills, but then it's the encounter design issue, not the save-scumming issue.
The part of RPG games that always take the most time for me is the beginning. Create a char, test it out realize you did a shitty char, restart and repeat. Beginning of an RPG game is hugely depending on metagaming. For me more RPGs should let you start with a "naked character" and make you invest points after you actually know how the game is played.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Allowing you to freely allocate the points actually discourage save scumming. Without storing points you have to reload each time you realize you've made a mistake and that you can't progress normally with your current char. With some points in bank you can go around and feel what challenges are in the next area before committing. Lots of chests you can't open? Raise your lockpicking skill. Get your butt kicked in combat? Time to invest in those martial skills. Running into many skill checks and failing? Better brush-up on your diplomacy. Of course it will lots or reloading if PC dies because of the lack of skills, but then it's the encounter design issue, not the save-scumming issue.

That's save scumming. You are describing save scumming.

It's not save scamming if you aren't reloading, but simply investing in the skills that gave you hardest time. Thre's a difference between "fuck, I failed this check, better reload and give myself enough points to pass" and "fuck, I keep failing these checks, better invest some points into relevant skills so that I can pass them in the future".

 

[toro]

Prime Junta don't give me that retadred rating. Roguey insinuates that dialogue tags and greyed-out lines are meant to help players from making characters with poorly-supported skills, so real questions here. Why did the poorly-supported skills existed in the first place? Or why is it poorly-supported? Don't you think there are better solution to that?

retadred is pretty tame for a AoD fanboi like you.

 

[Black Angel]

Prime Junta don't give me that retadred rating. Roguey insinuates that dialogue tags and greyed-out lines are meant to help players from making characters with poorly-supported skills, so real questions here. Why did the poorly-supported skills existed in the first place? Or why is it poorly-supported? Don't you think there are better solution to that?

retadred is pretty tame for a AoD fanboi like you.

Petition to restore toro's

™ , weasel™, and

™ tag

 

[toro]

Prime Junta don't give me that retadred rating. Roguey insinuates that dialogue tags and greyed-out lines are meant to help players from making characters with poorly-supported skills, so real questions here. Why did the poorly-supported skills existed in the first place? Or why is it poorly-supported? Don't you think there are better solution to that?

retadred is pretty tame for a AoD fanboi like you.

Petition to restore toro's

™ , weasel™, and

™ tag

This belongs to the site feedback. Please make an effort

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yes, it is. Metagaming is making use of any knowledge your character doesn't have.

Greyed-out dialogue choices are knowledge your character should not have. Therefore they are built-in metagaming. Much, much worse than regular metagaming which is up to you if you do it or not. This one is forced on you.

But yeah, I know Obsiditards love to have the game dictate everything they do.

 

[Roguey]

Greyed-out dialogue choices are knowledge your character should not have. Therefore they are built-in metagaming. Much, much worse than regular metagaming which is up to you if you do it or not. This one is forced on you.

It's only forced on you if there's no option to turn them off (and there is in both PoEs and Tyranny).

 

[FeelTheRads]

Not the point. Their defendants try to make them seem like an anti-metagaming device when they're anything but.

 

[Roguey]

Not the point. Their defendants try to make them seem like an anti-metagaming device when they're anything but.

JES didn't say they were anti-metagaming, just that in his experience, most people either don't know the options are there or metagame around their absence anyway.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Not the point. Their defendants try to make them seem like an anti-metagaming device when they're anything but.

They’re a necessary evil when you’re trying to sell to a mass audience because most players will have no experience with their build determining their dialogue options. Unless casuals metagame, they will assume that the dialogue options they see are the only dialogue options because they don’t know any better.

 

[FeelTheRads]

They’re a necessary evil

they will assume that the dialogue options they see are the only dialogue options because they don’t know any better.

In other words, casuals ruins gaming? Because then I don't see how they'd be necessary if you didn't want to cater to casuals.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Prebuffing makes sense if you can potentially use a certain buff for a specific encounter. For instance, Witcher's potions and oils were a good idea, the problem is they were not necessary on normal difficulty.

CDPR almost nailed the oils and other monster weaknesses. So close. Should've been more...

- monster has 90% resistance to normal weapons
- monster has 30% resistance to silver weapons
- monster has 15% resistance to weapon with first iteration oil
- monster has 0% resistance to weapon with second iteration oil
- monster has 15% weakness to weapon with third iteration oil
- stack with 25% weakness to Igni

If they did this, then "normal" would be the only difficulty slider you need. A high level Geralt could have still been in moderate danger from swarms of low to mid level monsters, and each difficult monster battle would have been a challenge that required careful study and preparation. Want it more casual? That's fine. Slide that difficulty on down. Shouldn't have been any need to increase the difficulty to make use of the game's core mechanics.

Also, on a side note that most people probably don't care about -- Geralt isn't supposed to be an invincible war machine. He almost dies fighting a pack of drowners, while in top condition, in the books. Geralt is able to hold his own against monsters because he's a witcher, but is only able to actually defeat them because he's smart and efficient.

 

[Zeriel]

Prebuffing makes sense if you can potentially use a certain buff for a specific encounter. For instance, Witcher's potions and oils were a good idea, the problem is they were not necessary on normal difficulty.

Having said that, I also never used skill magazines in New Vegas and old Fallouts. Just didn't seem right.

They worked really well in 2. Honestly, 3 would be better off if you were just some generic guy in the Witcher world and not Geralt. 1 and 2 nailed the feeling of being a Witcher and him much, much better.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

In the books Geralt fought a few monsters in the entire story. In a game he is fighting thousands. Even if you would reduce all the trash mobs in W3 it would still be hundreds, but then the tards would complain how the game is slow and theres nothing to do - so you get trash mobs every fifty meters, drowners jumping around villages where everyone lives normally and doesnt even mention drowners, endless resurrecting packs of wolves, syrens, ghouls and all other shit. Which then ruins economy and alchemy and leveling and the whole urgency of the main quest.

As for spending skill points and leveling up, the real solution is making skill points gains limited to specific style of gameplay. Fighting gets you combat skill points, talking gets you diplomacy skill points, stealthing and thieving gets you thievery skill points, which you cannot spend on other skills and abilities. In that way, there isnt much or any point in savescumming, because any skill points you didnt spend yet you simply cant allocate to other abilities anyway. And you cant reload to try a different approach if you already commuted to a certain style of gameplay.
Although if the design is good it will leave a bit of a wiggle room.

A little, but not enough for a sudden complete change of direction.
And if the player wants to create a smooth talking fighter or any other combination, it will be naturally more difficult to achieve through the gameplay itself.
But then also more rewarding as your options in quests will be more diverse.

Thats the best way to design leveling up in True RPGs that produces most natural way of advancing and building your character - through the gameplay.


Thats one of the lessons old Fallouts taught. Because they didnt teach game design only with stuff that was great, but also showed what could be better.



I think the IT spaceship game will go in that direction so thats good.

Outer worlds will probably have some kind of usual leveling up for casual tards though because thats who the game is made for.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

In the books Geralt fought a few monsters in the entire story. In a game he is fighting thousands. Even if you would reduce all the trash mobs in W3 it would still be hundreds, but then the tards would complain how the game is slow and theres nothing to do - so you get trash mobs every fifty meters, drowners jumping around villages where everyone lives normally and doesnt even mention drowners, endless resurrecting packs of wolves, syrens, ghouls and all other shit. Which then ruins economy and alchemy and leveling and the whole urgency of the main quest.

Necrophages and all kinds of shit proliferate around dead bodies, and Velen was stuck in basically WWI, so it makes sense they'd be all over the place. But the trash mobs were too closely packed. Could've kept the same number of enemies, but hidden a lot of them in actual dungeons. Old Elven ruins buried deep underground, a few more water levels off the coast, some abandoned towers submerged in swamps, maybe some mazes with poisonous gas. This would've been a lot better, but also much more time consuming for a game that was already delayed.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

It makes sense for some to be there, but it doesnt make sense for those to respawn all the time and that there are so many you can often see soldiers walking or positioned short distance away.
Velen wasnt stuck in WW1, the fighting was over.

Delays didnt play much into that, but making the game for mass superficial audience.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Sure, everything was too tightly packed. Scaling is tough.

The war wasn't over though. At the closing sequence, Nilfgaard either takes over and rapes all the women, or Temeria kicks out the invaders. The fighting wasn't front and center in-game like Assassin of Kings, because the story was focused on family rather than politics.

I don't buy into the whole "action = casual" deal. Morrowind is just as densely packed with enemies as the Witcher 3. Bloodlines is basically an action RPG. These are good RPGs.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

I didnt say the war was over. I said: the fighting was over. Velen was not a "ww1 situation" but an aftermath of a war.

Morrowind and Bloodlines were both action RPGs, made for mass audience. Bloodlines of course didnt have the open world so being densely packed was lest jarring and as far as i remember it was actually less dense then Morowind and W3. Most enemies were put into some enclosed spaces the story-quests and the setting dictated not just sprayed all over without any sense.

- hah, in the w3 thread Zombra is praising the game for "not being empty".
I rest my case.

Anyway, lets get back to my glorious leveling up epiphany i got when i was dipped.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

The final battle happened offscreen. That wasn't Geralt's story anymore, so it wasn't necessary to play through it.

Calling Morrowind an action RPG is an absurd relic of sad Daggerfall fans.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

The final battle happened offscreen. That wasn't Geralt's story anymore, so it wasn't necessary to play through it.

That has nothing to do with what we were arguing about. Cut it the fuck out already. Stop adding irrelevant shit.

Calling Morrowind an action RPG is an absurd relic of sad Daggerfall fans.

No. Its an action game because majority of gameplay is dependent on player skills more then on character skills. The fact it has character skills which limit content to some extent is what makes it a part of RPG genre. But definitely in the action RPG section.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Me: Game takes place in the middle of war = necrophages
You: War is over
Me: War is not over
You: No, war is over
Me: War is definitely not over.

Seems pretty relevant to me.

Its an action game because majority of gameplay is dependent on player skills more then on character skills.

Did you even play it? You literally can't hit anybody without a high enough skill in that specific kind of combat. Also, a retarded chimp with cerebral palsy could master the combat; the game requires no skill whatsoever.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Ah, sorry, i didnt see immediately you are incapable of seeing what you wrote or what i wrote, even after i fucking repeated it you fucking imbecile.

Also, a retarded chimp with cerebral palsy could master the combat;

haha. Yeah, it was made for those like you.

 

[Excommunicator]

The final battle happened offscreen. That wasn't Geralt's story anymore, so it wasn't necessary to play through it.

Calling Morrowind an action RPG is an absurd relic of sad Daggerfall fans.

First person real time RPGs are action RPGs almost by nature. That's not necessarily a criticism. In morrowind avoiding attacks is twitch based and all magic is used like an FPS projectile. Even throwing weapon hit chance into that mix it still fits strongly in the ARPG pool.