Nathaniel Chapman
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Posts posted by Nathaniel Chapman
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The major drawback of this game is that we don
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Each point of Will gives more than 1 DPS to your abilities, based on the focus cost of the ability. The idea is that in order to use a special ability, you need to do X attacks that do *not* have will added into their damage, so Will's impact on abilities is increased to compensate. This is a little bit too in depth for our help screen, which was intended to just get you going. Of course truly hardcore players will figure out the detailed damage contributions of each stat
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By the way, speaking of PvP games, if anyone wants to play some Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike Online, add me on XBL.
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Pretty interesting. I like your point at the end about game mechanics.
Have you ever, you know, got drunk and burst into a university cognitive psych department demanding to know how people approach puzzles in real life?
Not as such, but I do think that to some extent you can intuit how people will approach puzzles based on how they approach learning generally. And, in many ways, good content design is about teaching the player how the mechanics of the game work. Obviously the other part is designing deep and engaging mechanics, but without sufficiently training the player it's unlikely that they will be able to properly apply the mechanics of the game.
And, in this case, I don't mean training through text tutorials, those are really the worst (but easiest) way to explain things. Usually the best way to train players is to introduce new mechanics in safe, simple ways, and then slowly begin to combine them, to force players to understand the implications of how the mechanics interact.
It's actually one reason why I personally am a big fan of "difficult" games - it's not that I'm sadistic towards the player or masochistic when I play difficult games. Instead, what I really are games that provide clear feedback as to whether or not I am successfully mastering their mechanics. Often that means providing serious consequences for failing to properly apply the mechanics. In many cases, standard difficulty levels in games don't require you to fully engage with the mechanics in order to win, and that's a lot less interesting to me, personally. It's also part of why I enjoy PvP games quite a bit - there's very clear feedback as to whether or not you are getting better at the game (you either win more, or don't).
Obviously I appreciate that not everyone wants to try to completely figure out every game they play, which is why lower difficulty levels are a good thing to include, too. And why it's a good idea to match people in PvP games with players of roughly equal or only slightly different skill levels - but I do like it when games give you the *option* of playing against much, much better players, because sometimes that's when you learn the most.
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Your own NWN2 has topped the Steam charts every single time is has been discounted to $10, even though the game is 5 years old. In fact, NWN2 has consistently been among the top 100 games played on Steam, even though it's only been available on that platform since December 2010. You probably can't get any numbers from Atari on the Steam sales, but I would be surprised if they aren't happy with the additional money they are making from a 5 year old game.
Topping the Steam charts doesn't necessarily mean a lot in terms of revenue because sales on Steam are "spikier" than they are on the App Store. Meaning that the number of games sold per day on Steam is more highly variable than it is on the App Store. So even though you may take the #1 spot that doesn't necessarily mean very much unless its during a time period where a lot of sales are happening. On the flip side, having a #1 spot in the App Store means you are selling a very consistently large number of units, again, from the data I've seen.
PC RPG's have tremendous legs, and I know the current gaming market doesn't pass on that money to the developers who can't self-publish, but it's still a strength that only that platform has. Can you imagine any iPad game still selling 5 years from now?I sure can. Plants vs. Zombies has maintained a high store position for a year and a half and shows no signs of slowing down.
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So, doesn't your last. There are plenty of indie/artsy games on the Ipad. Why would it have to appeal to everyone that owns an IPAD? Hidden Apple policy?
I never mentioned indie/artsy games. Paradox almost exclusively makes $30 PC games, none of them are indie/artsy and there's certainly nothing like them on iPad for $2. The most recent PC games similar to BG2 (DA:O, Drakensang, MotB/SoZ) were also neither indie nor artsy.
No, but you mentioned that 2$ Ipad Games somehow HAVE to appeal (or appear to appeal) to everyone which just isn't the case.
Well, it's true in the sense that in order to break even or make the same amount of profit at a given budget, a 2$ game needs to sell many times the number of units of a 10$ game
It doesn't need to appeal to everyone, but a lower-priced game should probably appeal to more people than a casual game.Also: http://2dboy.com/2011/02/08/ipad-launch/
The reality seems to be that you can end up selling a *lot* more on iPad, which allows you to spend more on the game, which means better games/more content overall. So in the end the main reason I'd want to make niche games on iPad is that we could make them better than we could PC only games.
Which isn't to say it's not worth it to make a PC version too. It's certainly not hard to port from iPad to Mac, and Mac->PC is generally easier than PC->Mac, depending on the tech used and whether or not you plan to do it up front.
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Josh said that Dragonheart proves that you can successfully execute BG2 or IWD2's combat on an iPad, not that Dragonheart > BG2 or MotB.
Yes, you *can*, just as you could play Deus Ex on the PS2. That doesn't mean it's the best platform for it. I have no thing against porting to more platforms, but I think it's strange to discount the PC when it has been home to so many similar games.
IMO Battleheart is a much better adaptation of real-time tactical combat to a new interface than most FPSes are to consoles. Point-and-click mouse control works really, really well on touchscreens. For games where the mouse is used for more vector-based control (e.g. FPSes) touchscreens aren't quite as good - but are still a better fit than analog sticks.
There are plenty of successful PC games that don't rely on high production values. All games published by Paradox Interactive for instance and many other games from Europe and Russia. They're not low-budget indie games either, they have pretty nice graphics.There are a lot of great PC games from Europe and Russia, agreed. There are also successful PC games that don't rely on high production values. However, I think that the large market of iPad users and the lack of competition and market pressure from huge AAA PC games makes it an even better platform for certain genres of games.
Also, the European PC games which are not low-budget indie games generally don't have as hardcore or old-school mechanics as newer games. The Witcher 2, for instance, has awesome presentation values but also clearly does not have old-school combat mechanics.
Why is that exactly? Full voice-acting has been possible to do in games since the 90's, so how come people only started demanding it in PC games since 2008? Or could it be that publishers want multiplatform RPG's can be marketed as cinematic experiences and no one really has any idea how a well-done, medium budget game -
Oh, also, if you're interested in checking out deep iPad/iPhone games, may I recommend:
King of Dragon Pass - http://appshopper.com/games/king-of-dragon-pass
Avadon - http://appshopper.com/games/avadon-the-black-fortress-hd
And, since it came up in the thread a bunch, FF Tactics - http://appshopper.com/games/final-fantasy-...ar-of-the-lions
All good, and deep, RPGs/rpg-like games.
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If it controlled just as well? Sure.
Alright. I prefer playing simpler games on my iPad and more demanding/complex on my PC. I'd rather play a game that is pick-up-and play on the iPad since I mostly use it on the move, while I'd want to sit down and play a game like BG/DA:O/NWN2 for longer sessions with a bigger screen, better sound, hotkeys.. But that's just me.
I just find it very odd that we got BG2, IWD2, NWN2/MotB/SoZ, Drakensang, DA:O and now all we can hope for are $2 iPad games. It's more than a bit jarring to go from hearing Obsidian say in 2008 that MotB did well and exceeded sales projections to Josh saying in 2011 that we can totally look forward to $2 iPad games with cutesy characters and no dialogue for our party-based CRPG fix.
Josh said that Dragonheart proves that you can successfully execute BG2 or IWD2's combat on an iPad, not that Dragonheart > BG2 or MotB.
Why use the iPad for something like BG2? Among other things, 1) it is somewhat risky to develop an oldschool RPG these days, so it's a good idea to minimize risk by not spending as much on art as you would on a PC or console game 2) people are more willing to buy niche games with less fancy 3D (or even *gasp* 2D) art on iPad than they are on PC, 3) people frequently already use their iPads for reading (either the internet or actual books) so I believe that gamers may be more accepting of a text and dialog heavy game than they would on other platforms.
And it's not just us. Spiderweb Software (the guys who make Avernum and Geneforge) released Avadon on iPad and apparently it did very well. They've said they're going to be porting all their future games for iPad, which indicates that it probably sold well. It was also a great platform to play the game on, and I honestly probably wouldn't have tried it on PC, where it's competing for my time with, well, PC games.
And, price point != quality, especially on the app store. There's great games for 99c (or free) and crap that costs 10 bucks. The App Store is doing crazy things to game pricing and it's not really accurate to say that a 2$ iPad game has less to offer than a 20$ indie PC game.
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Er...I was thinking of something else but never mind. I don't mind stylized comedy-touch. In fact, I even recommended Tactics Ogre to Chapman since some of the staff are common to FFT, which is his favorite. I even wondered why Iron Tower needed 3D engine for that kind of game.If we are to conflate illustration style with game quality (why?), 2D illustration and comically-drawn characters should be indicative of an excellent game.I've played Tactics Ogre. I liked it a lot, but I never finished it because it's a long game and LYFE SITUATIONZ and all.
FFT is a really good game, but I'm willing to appreciate that it's got flaws, too. The difficulty "curve" looks more like a crazy square wave and there are aspects of the JP system that encourage goofy sorts of grinding (leaving the last enemy alive while you throw rocks at each other). But overall I think it's one of the best combinations of individual character customization, party customization and tactical combat in an RPG.
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I'll bug the powers to be
I think both us and Square agreed on going for more action-ey mechanics. I don't really think there was pressure or disagreement from either side. Again, as C2B mentioned, this was DS, not Jagged Alliance or UFO. We weren't really starting with a base game where tactical combat was a key focus. We knew we wanted to push the gameplay more, and pushing it in the action seemed to make the most sense for many reasons already discussed.
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It's not that a console can't handle party-based gameplay, it's that party-based gameplay in real time with a controller is tedious. Make that baby turn-based though and you're good to go.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example of that!
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Small critique to Nathaniel, I think he tends to ramble a little. So just to be sure, the core reason why they didn't make DS3 a party-based game is because they didn't think that a console could handle the kind of party-based gameplay they would have liked to use, correct?
Not exactly. The core reason was that if we were going to do party-based gameplay, we wanted really good, tactically deep party-based gameplay - the kind you saw in IWD and BG/BG2. But, 1) that kind of gameplay is pretty tedious on a console controller, and 2) Dungeon Siege isn't really an IP that lends itself to that kind of tactical gameplay. So we decided to focus on single-character action.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I don't think that it is impossible to make great real-time tactical party-based gameplay on a console. I just think that it needs to be the core focus of the game. Two reasons we didn't do that were that the DS series isn't now and never has been a tactically focused game (like, say, Jagged Alliance or FFT). Plus DS3 is the first game where we were really focused on developing great core action combat mechanics from scratch. So, we chose to spend our time trying to make great action combat and minimal companion gameplay vs. what we thought would have been unsatisfactory action and unsatisfactory party-based gameplay had we used our resources differently.
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I also think this fight was the one fight in the game that crossed over from hard and challenging to simply frustrating on Hardcore. Just too much rolling around in this fight, plus the fact that the build-up (the two cyclopses) makes the fight too annoying to replay when you die to the Archon girl.
I will agree that this is definitely the hardest fight in the game in Hardcore. However, I did feel that the fight worked really well as a prolonged test of execution. Personally in my playtesting I didn't find that I really died randomly - each time I died I could point to where I could have done something differently to avoid dying. It was pretty difficult to execute with the consistency that was required, but that was the point of that fight.
I can agree that the consistent execution required could be seen as frustrating, especially if you weren't really expecting that demanding of a fight. If anything, I wish the other boss fights in Hardcore did a better job of demanding consistent execution in the way that fight did, to prepare you for that fight. (specifics about boss fights folllow)
I think the Rajani fight was a good introduction, since her Pillar of Fire attack (the purple ground effect that explodes into a column of fire and knocks you down/does extreme damage) requires you to avoid it pretty much 100% of the time on Hardcore. But the Dapper Old Gent and Warbeast fights didn't have as many of those kinds of execution checks.
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Old World Blues has been getting great reviews. The funny moments in Obsidian/Black Isle games are also some of the most memorable ones. Obsidian seems to be really good at writing comedy. So why doesn't Obsidian just make a game with an emphasis on comedy?
Heck, Alpha Protocol could have had a story and setting that's more like No One Lives Forever rather than Splinter Cell.
Why not?
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Here's an example and a counter-example of what Josh is talking about.
In Deus Ex, when you buy a skill rank, the change is instantly noticeable because the granularity is so large. You have 5 ranks and so each rank can afford to be a massive, obvious improvement to players.
In Fallout, a single point in a skill makes no perceptible difference in the actual player experience.
The idea is that it's better in most cases to give fewer large rewards than many small rewards. This is especially true when you have a fixed-endpoint single-player game. Obviously it's harder for something like an MMO. Also you can mix the two - Perks are an example of a less granular, more perceptible change in Fallout.
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Hey, the answers should be going up soon. Closing this thread up in the meantime. If you want to discuss the answers when they're out, I'd recommend making a new thread!
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Hey, the answers should be going up soon. Closing this thread up in the meantime. If you want to discuss the answers when they're out, I'd recommend making a new thread!
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If Obsidian did a Space Siege game in the future, it would have to blow Mass Effect out of the water as far as Sci-Fi RPGs go. I don't doubt they could do it but that's a high bar to reach.
They would just need to tone down the EXTREME!!! antics and the romantic fan service, and a better game would easily come out. Also, I'd welcome deeper roleplaying myself, both in systems and dialogue.
The sad thing is that'd result in the game being poorly received by the general public. I mean, imo from a rpg perspective (or just any perspective personally) New Vegas blows Fallout 3 completely out of the water but then when I ask my friends and stuff or look around on many forum communities the consensus is that Fallout 3 is more "epic" and "extreme" and "awesome".
I actually think that has less to do with the themes of F:NV and more to do with the perception of F:NV in terms of bugs and the fact that it is pretty similar to F3 in terms of tech, so it doesn't immediately jump out as something new or different. While there are some critics/members of the public who didn't like F:NV's story, there are a lot who did. More often other aspects of the game that are brought up as negatives.
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I would not have thought that the XBOX version would have allowed you to change difficulty in an already started game due to achievements and such...
At the end of the game you are awarded the achievement for the lowest difficulty selected at any point during the playthrough (assuming you saved after cranking the difficulty down). This is both why you're able to change the difficulty mid-game, and also why it persists with the saved game and not the profile, like your options - it would suck to accidentally turn it down, reload an earlier save, and lose the possibility of earning the harder difficulty achievement.
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<crossposted from the DS3 forum>
Hey Everyone,
I'm Nathaniel, the lead designer on Dungeon Siege III. If you guys have any questions about Dungeon Siege III, Neverwinter Nights 2, Obsidian in general, Game Design, the industry, whatever - that you'd like me to answer, please post them in this thread!
Some notes:
I will pick the questions I answer and I don't have unlimited time, so I'm more inclined to pick interesting ones!
You're not going to hurt my feelings, so feel free to ask tough questions, but I won't likely pick flamebait/trolling
Let me know your first name and location in the question post if you want me to give you a shout out for the question, otherwise I'll just use your forum name.
I'm fine with answering questions on non-DSIII topics
I'll be wrapping up the questions on Thursday and try to get the blog post up shortly thereafter, so get 'em in!
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Hey Everyone,
I'm Nathaniel, the lead designer on Dungeon Siege III. If you guys have any questions about Dungeon Siege III, Neverwinter Nights 2, Obsidian in general, Game Design, the industry, whatever - that you'd like me to answer, please post them in this thread!
Some notes:
- I will pick the questions I answer and I don't have unlimited time, so I'm more inclined to pick interesting ones!
- You're not going to hurt my feelings, so feel free to ask tough questions, but I won't likely pick flamebait/trolling
- Let me know your first name and location in the question post if you want me to give you a shout out for the question, otherwise I'll just use your forum name.
- I'm fine with answering questions on non-DSIII topics
I'll be wrapping up the questions on Thursday and try to get the blog post up shortly thereafter, so get 'em in!
- I will pick the questions I answer and I don't have unlimited time, so I'm more inclined to pick interesting ones!
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The patch is out. Great. Apparently though it doesn't fix the startup crash if your OS language is set to anything other than English.
What gives?
Yes, I can make the game launch if I switch to English. Switching back and forth every time I want to play though is really getting on my nerves -- and no, I can't keep it permanently on English.
Fix please. Soon.
D.
As far as we're aware, that issue should be resolved. Please provide additional details if you are still encountering the issue, along with a DXDiag if at all possible, to bugs at obsidian dot net.
Thanks!
It doesn't need to appeal to everyone, but a lower-priced game should probably appeal to more people than a casual game.
Why do some say Will > Attack?
in Dungeon Siege III: General Discussion
Posted