Madscientist

I do not know about the %, but at least for BG3 I can say that many threads have been closed because they turned into a turn based vs real time rage and the official thread for this topic is growing all the time even though it is known for month that the game will definitively be turn based only. Personally I do not care. There are many turn based and also many real time games that I like.

my 2 cents: PoE2: The main cover shows a ship fight against a kraken. You do not have this in the game ( kraken yes, ship fight yes, but not kraken on ship). Plus this cover makes me think of the pirates of the caribean movies, but the game gives me a different feeling. Maybe they should hire Johnny Depp for PoE3 P:K: I played the game in german and I did not think that the writing is bad. I think the game is very good, but it is also very difficult and confusing if you are not a DnD nerd. I made a bad char, but at some point I switched to story mode difficulty and finished the game. I did not have problems with bugs, but I started playing several month after release. The devs promised to explain stuff better and improve UI to make it easier for new players to get along in the sequel, but pathfinder has super complex rules and the fans always want more classes, races feats and so on and the new game has many more options than PK. D:OS1+2: I finished part 1 and I liked it, main dislike was random equipment. I never finished D:OS2 even though I was a backer. Totally random items, extreme level scaling with inflating stats ( generic item of one level is better than epic item 2 levels lower), extremely simple system where you max out one stat and skill to one shot everything, I did not like the physical/magic armor system and I did not like that the whole map was covered with necrofire or electricity after the first round in every combat. I think Larians problem is that Divine Divinity was a Diablo Clone game mechanics wise ( random items that have a level ) and they kept this system when they went from a single character action game to a party based and turn based game. I am happy that they moved to DnD, everything I see from BG3 looks fantastic. This will be one of the best games ever.

Please no mini game for speech skills. Mini games for mechanical actions ( lock picking, hacking ) can be OK if done well, but the "mini game" for speech is to select the right answer.

Personally I hope that you can spend points on skills or attributes or select abilities/talents( like DnD or PoE ) instead of the "learning by doing" approach of Skyrim. Skyrim style leads to grinding which I consider boring. Please let us not craft 100 steel swords until the skill gets high enough so we can craft gold swords. Morrowind encouraged the player to jump and run all the time when moving from A to B. Or you sneak all the time just to get better. I think Gothic 1+2 had the best open world level up system. Spend points for trainers which need to be found and sometimes unlocked by a quest or joining a faction.

Companions are good in turn based or rtwp games. In Skyrim or 3D fallout they made more problems than they were good for so I was playing solo. They stand in your line of fire, they get killed all the time or they run after some enemies in the distance. Negative record was F3 where my supermutant companion saw an enemy at the other side of a river, jumped down a cliff into the river and chased after it. I did not follow him because the river was radioactive so he disappeared at the horizon and I never saw him again. I did not play TOW, still waiting for release of GOTY edition on something less epic (such as Control recently). My experiance: Companions are good if you can control them. If not they can be a real pain in the A. I am talking mostly about combat and skill use, not story related stuff.

Just to be sure: You can insult villagers until they attack so you can kill them without being a wanted criminal. I have not tested if you can kill guards this way without being a criminal. Its been ages since I played Morrowind.

Since we talk about speech and crime: In Morrowind it was a crime to attack or kill other people or to steal stuff. Guards would stop you and you have to pay money or they attack you ( attacking/killing guards is also a crime, so the money you have to pay goes up). There is a trick to go around this: You have to insult them until they attack you first. This is needed for at least one quest where you have to kill some people without drawing attention. Reminds me of the western movie "The great silence". The silent protagonist who annoys gangsters until they draw their gun and he can kill them in self defense vs Klaus Kinski as Loco the killer.

This is a very good example of how it should be done. I did not Play Fallout4 so I cannot comment on that. I agree with you that the choice to attack another person is importent. Now I understand a little bit better why people want to have it. Personaly I have never attacked other people unless they were hostile or there was a quest to kill them. If I accidentally kill an innocent person I would reload the game. But yes, there are people who play in a diferent way. side note: I would consider myself lawful neutral. I like order and I dislike people who ignore rules. In games I use to be lawful good because good often means you put yourself into danger for others. In real life I try to avoid risks as good as possible, but in games there is a reload button. I am so lawful that I cannot play a chaotic char. When I see chaotic options in a game I think "This is nuts. Why would anyone ever consider doing such a thing?" I can imagine to play an evil char. Here is someone I like to play in BG3 (taken from the Larian forums) Regarding Gothic: If you beat a person in melee he is knocked out for some time. You can take his stuff and the enemy will take some of your money if they beat you. Then the loser stands up again with 1HP. You can attack a knocked out enemy to kill him. Beating somebody with ranged weapons or magic will always kill the other person. It is considered normal that people fight and knock out each other. If you kill somebody it is a crime and others who have seen it will become hostile. If you have committed a crime you have to pay money to somebody to clear this, which might be hard if this person is hostile too or you are chased by an angry mob. By the way: I do not understand the concept of non lethal damage in DnD ( or was it pathfinder?)

Thank you. First, thanks for reminding me of the end of Disco Elysium. The meeting with the other cops is more interesting than the usual ending slides. There are 3 people who evaluate your actions so you get different opinions on your actions and it is interactive, so you can tell why you did it or what you want to do next. You said that your actions in DE or TW are limited, but in Mass Effect (and most other Bioware games, I guess) you cannot steal or kill NPC too. I never felt that was a big downside, at least it did not stop me from enjoying those games. On the other hand I cannot understand the motto: "You can kill everyone and still finish the game." It makes no sense that everyone drops a letter with the information you need or you can talk with their ghost. If you mess up you deserve to fail. Josh talked about Fallout NV. He told the designers "You should expect that the player kills this char as soon as he can and this must not break the game." Well, I finished NV once. I only killed hostile creatures, except when a quest wants me to kill someone and I believed it would be OK for my char to do so. I never had the desire to kill villagers or quest givers. If you have the main quest to save the president and you kill the president then you fail the game, thats it. The only problem is how to tell this the player. One way is not to tell it ( In realms of Arcadia 1 you have to find pieces of a map. Selecting the wrong answers sometimes prevents you from getting them. If you miss too many of them you cannot finish the game and you will travel the world map forever in search for them. This game is almost impossible to finish without guide). Onother way would be instant game over. The middle ground would be a message "You did something that prevents you from finishing the main story." ( In Morrowind there is a dungeon with an enemy and if you kill it you get this message. You even get it after finishing the main story and no quest ever send you to this dungeon. I have no idea what this means.) So I would say there should be 2 options: - What you can do is limited. You cannot do things that ruin the main story ( like killing NPC or getting attacked for stealing stuff). If you do something that would ruin the main story its game over. ( Nier Automata has many "fake endings" like getting killed in the intro, killing a major NPC, abandoning your mission or removing your OS) - You can do whatever you want, but if you mess up too much you will fail. What exactly "mess up too much" means is dependent on the situation. Is it fair that after playing a game for 50h you put yourself in a position where you cannot finish the game and loading the last save cannot fix it? NO, but it is realistic. The world is not fair. Play by the rules or suffer the consequences. In a "normal" RPG the game should explain those rules, so that players do not put themselves accidentally in a bad position. That is unless the game itself is about learning through trial and error or the game is about being an insane mass murderer.

I agree with you on this one. In games with well written text and some kind of alignment there are often discussions where players complain why this choice is considered good, evil or whatever. If an option perfectly fits an alignment it is often bad or boring. I have just finished the Mass Effect trilogy. The games are good and even most answers you can give are are good. But the classification as paragon/renegate felt strange sometimes. Also the fact that they show only key words as answer and not the whole text let to some situations where my answer was different than what I expected or it was not clear to me what selecting this answer would do. So far TW3 was one of the best games ever ( especially in terms of reactivity/ choice & consequence ) and I hope they continue like this with cyberpunk. Well, it had one issue mentioned in the OP video: Using the hypnosis skill whenever possible was always a win button. I have played many RPGs so maxing out my "persuation" skill was the first thing I did for Gerald, only then I started to improve my combat skills. I agree that the system of Disco Elysium is good for almost any game where you have a numerical skill value. But it is not an alignment system. Let me explain what I mean: I think that an alignment is an EXTERNAL JUDGEMENT. The gods ( or the devs in case of a game ) declare that this action is good/bad/lawful/chaotic. This is a fact and the player has to accept it. In Disco Elysium everything about the char is internal. You play the game and you select answers. Lets say you say many times " I am the law." Then the game asks you if you really believe this and you have the option to accept this thought or not. Your character can think of himself whatever he wants, even if this is totally against any objective facts.

I did some more thinking and I came to this conclusion: The best alignment system is: NO ALIGNMENT AT ALL In the video from Josh he should add one great example: The Witcher series. Lets look especially at part 3. The game is very reactive ( most quests have several solutions and some of them have great impact), there are several factions and tons of characters. While the game gives you tons of choices that also include morale or alignment stuff, the game does not judge your actions by calling them good, evil, lawful, chaotic and so on. You do something and the game shows you the results of your actions, in some cases many hours later (which I consider good to avoid save scumming). I think this is one of the reasons why the witcher games are so immersive. The devs are not distracted by thinking in categories such as good and evil. They only think about what options would make sense for this char and how would other chars react to this. As opposite example, Josh spoke about how much work it was in PoE2 to do all this ( personal likes and dislikes like pro religion or anti huana, dispositions like cruel or benelovent, the reputation with the different factions). A game can keep track of some reputations internally when needed but it should not show this the player.

In turn based mode the graze range is bigger, which means you and enemies will miss less and graze more in turn based than in rtwp. This means stuff that depends on retaliation is less good in turn based. What difficulty do you want to play? I had a devoted/soul blade with greatsword on normal in turn based and I had no problems, but any char can beat the game on normal. I did not try to beat the mega bosses, but everything else was easy. Dex is almost useless in turn based. In real time it lets you act faster, but in turn based everyone has only action per turn anyway, except instant actions .

The Lord himself has returned to the forums. Praise this miracle I helped with the german translation mod by reporting errors. The mod made the bad translation better, but the result is still not perfect because non of the modders was a professional writer, as far as I know. We could deal with spelling and grammar problems, but some things cannot be changed easily by modders. Sorry, I was just reporting bugs, I did not write any code. Translating a book is easier than translating a game. People read a book from beginning to end in a row. Games give several exclusive options that depend on each other. For example you can kill a char or not and killing him starts another quest. Games have also tons of other text such as UI elements, barks and a codex that explains stuff. So a game has tons of text but the players does not read the text in the order it is written in the code and different players will read stuff in a different order. There are also things the translator cannot change. For example in text box one you have three options and selecting option one will start text box two where character A is speaking and then text box three where character B is speaking. The same text has a different lengh in different languages, but you need to fit it into the same number of boxes in the same order. Since translators will not see text in the same order as the player it is absolutely neccessary that they know the context in which stuff is happening. There are some cases in which it would have been better not to translate a game at all instead of having the terrible translation we got ( still get nightmares from Oblivion, you surely know what a potion with the name "TrdschwH" does, right? RPGs are the most difficult games to translate because usually they are very big, they have tons of text and most of them have a complex fantasy setting that needs to be explained. The opposite end of the spectrum would be a puzzle or arcade game. In tetris you only have to translate the main menu and the score screen.

Sorry, but I disagree Since we already have some videos here, this is my favourite Choice an consequence Look at the part "failure is a consequence" and "things that should fail in the real world should also fail in the game". If you try to disarm a bomb and your disarm skill is low you will blow yourself up. If you have low int and cha and you try to convince a scientist that the universe is cube shapes you will fail. As he says in the video: Many games encourage players to chose the good but unrealistic option, and this is bad. Very difficult actions should be locked behind very difficult skill checks. It is also OK if there are some options that always fail, because some things just don´t work. A good example may be Age of Decadence. You can talk your way through the game or you can fight your way through the game, but you will most likely die if you try something your char is not skilled with. For example somebody tells you he can guide you through the city. If you accept he will lead you to his bandit friends and they will attack you no matter what what speech skills you have and you will die if you are not a very good fighter. Lesson: Do not trust strangers.

Very interesting. It would be nice if he gave a source for that info. Officially we only have the trailer and an old interview where they wanted to make a game like skyrim.

Players do things that give rewards. Good games give rewards for doing things that make sense in the game world. Role playing means that there are several options and those lead to different results with different rewards or punishments according to what makes sense in the game world. In a good game there is no conflict between game mechanics and role playing. The original Deus Ex is the best example I have for this. Disco Elysium is also a very good example because the game reacts to almost everything you do. It is bad when games have game mechanics that reward a playstyle that makes little sense in the game world. We already mentioned the new Deus Ex (exp and money for hacking, exp for killing enemies with different exp for different ways to kill them.) Well, I still enjoyed the new Deus Ex and there are much worse examples where the best way to become more powerful is to play in a totally unintuitive way. I think Final Fantasy II had one of the worst levelling systems ever. I am sure you know lots of bad examples too. I also think that Readrics castle in PoE1 is a bad example. Killing everyone gives lots of money while not having any influence on the quest outcome. In the end it matters only if you kill Readric or not. Yes, I think Benweth is a better example. I always used the non violent route. The dialogue with Mirke and the piano scene are really funny.

Are players really so impatient that they stop playing when they do not get a mechanical reward (exp, money, item, skill, . . .) every minute? Im am perfectly fine with getting a reward only when you do some relevant progress in a quest. Rewards need to be earned, not given for free. Whats next? You get exp for selecting your char, clicking on the ground or eating an apple? Personally I dislike the idea of getting exp for skill usage. Using a skill is just a tool to get a result, it is not a goal in itself. For example in Deus Ex you got a fixed amount of exp for entering a room. It does not matter how you enter it ( bribe the guard, kill the guard for the key, hack the computer, pick the lock, crawl through ducts, blow up the door). So yes, I prefer a result based reward ( you get rewarded for achieving a desired goal) over an action based reward ( you get rewarded because you do something). On the other hand I hate grinding, which means to do the same stuff over and over again. For example repeatedly killing similar enemies to gain a level or repeatedly craft items to improve a skill.

So it looks like we agree that a system like Fallout NV combined with the system of Disco Elysium would be good. As Josh said: The Disco Elysium system greatly increases reactivity ( The player feels that his actions have some influence) without the need to create many new outcomes or choice options for a dialogue. It takes some extra efford ( There are only a few things that influence one quest, but there are many quests) but it is much less efford than PoE2, where you have to check every line for several arbitrary tags and you check the reputation of everyone vs everyone else even when it has no effect. I also agree with him that you should track good and bad reputation separately. It feels wrong when you are considered neutral after first helping 20 people and then murdering those 20 people in their sleep.

I think TW3 is the best open world action game so far. All of it is great, but I thik B+W is especially good. Maybe I just like vampires. By the way: The one time I played it I got the best result in all side quests but I got the worst ending in the main quest. I did everything wrong with Ciri and the world is ruled by a racist zealot. Second would be Fallout NV and Nier Automata (OK, not open world, but the environment and the music is fantastic) I did not really like Skyrim, Oblivion was a desaster and Morrowind was my best TES game so far.

Disco Elysium is great, but you have to change tons of things if you make a more normal RPG. In this game every interaction in the game is done in the same dialogue and skill system. I would call Disco Elysium a "skill based adventure game" (character skill, not player skill) and not a classic RPG. In most normal RPGs anything that is not dialogue should be done as gameplay if possible, like combat, sneaking, jumping and so on. Those scripted events should only be a workaround if you cannot do something with the normal game mechanics, though I admit that they can be interesting. I agree with Josh and you that the System of New Vegas combined with the tag system from Disco Elysium ( as Josh called it, meaning that former actions modify or enable later skill checks)is good, especially if you use many different skills in dialogue, not just speech. I also agree with Josh and the other video, that at least in dialogues I prefer skill checks as threshold instead of a dice roll. In many games I have save scummed to get the right result. If you miss in combat you can attack again. If you fail to pick a lock you can try again. But if you fail a dialogue choice you cannot.

I liked several things in WM 1+2 more than the original PoE1 (like the personal quest of my monk companion where you are totally stoned) and BoW and FS were better than most of PoE2 (not a big fan of SSS, but I prefer story over combat) MotB was better than NWN2 and while Fallout NV was very good, the DLC with the crazy brains in glasses was fantastic ( Hey, I am a mad scientist ) It really looks like Obsidian is good with DLC. I still wait until The Outer Worlds is released elsewhere ( not Epic) and I will buy it as complete Edition ( The game + all DCL after some patches). I finished Pathfinder Kingmaker, Fallout NV and The Witcher 3 only once because they are so huge. By the way, Blood and Wine was a great DLC too, I still remember the quest were you can talk with your horse.

This is a very good video. So the best solution is to give every named NPC an own personality with an own opinion about you. But this is very hard because there are tons of NPC and for tons of your actions the devs have to decide for which NPC is it relevant and which way, for example does he like you more or less or does he fear you. So the most practical way is to: a) split up speech into several independent skills such as persuation, intimidation and deception b) use many different skills in dialogue, not just classic speech skills. Many skills should be used both outside and inside of dialogue. c) the knowledge based approach sounds great ( you need to learn something first to bring it up in dialogue) Disco Elysium is a great game but it will be hard to use it in a more classic RPG. It has no real combat and treats every interaction with anything like a dialogue. Failure is often as interesting as succes and every skill is used often, some active, some passive and most of them both ways. EXP should be given for advancing a quest, not for skill usage. In Pathfinder ( I think in some of the new fallouts too) you get more exp for winning more difficult skill checks. As a result players chose the answer with the most difficult skill check because it gives most exp, not the answer that makes most sense for their char. One of my favourite games is the original Deus Ex. You get exp only for finishing quests and exploring the environment, not for using skills and the game gives you several possible solutions for most stuff. This allows the player to play however they want without feeling bad about it. Later Deus Ex for example give exp for hacking which means you hack everything, even if you know the password or there is no one who could trigger the alarm any more.

In single character games you have to do everything yourself (weapons and magic, damage+healing+status effects) so usually they are classless and you can learn everything. The downside is that all chars usually feel very similar in the end. In Skyrim you are master of everything in the end. The downside of a class system is that you have to chose a class at the beginning before you know what the game throws at you. In a party based game your companions can do stuff you cannot do well, but in a single character game you have to do everything yourself. Thats why I think a system with limited skill points combined with the need to unlock a specialized trainer to spend them is the best way. First you can explore the world a bit to see what you face and what options you have and then you have to chose which way you want to approach things. For example first you meet the fighting guild, the mage guild and a monk order and then you can chose which of them to join. Of course those choices should be exclusive to some degree. It makes no sense that you are the leader of all groups at once, including opposing groups like the city guards and the assassin guild, like in the TES games.

Thanks.