Nathaniel Chapman

Dungeon Siege 3: Shadows of Melons

You guys better get the loot thread to 12 pages before you make me look like a liar.

A melon obviously. Imposing looks with lots of red inside? I leave the interpretation to you my young padawans. Don't disappoint me. Especially you Nathaniel. I think it largely depends on what kind of melon we are, doesn't it?

I'll be honest, the reason I avoid going into this level of detail is not just that I'm not supposed to, but also that this stuff is so fluid in pre-alpha development that anything I tell you will be out of date by the time you actually get to play it. Suffice to say, we'll try to make both our console and PC versions play like an awesome ARPG. We are putting more of a focus on the action itself than in many other ARPGs, so the combat may feel a bit more "action-ey" than, say, DS1 or 2. Which is not to say that it won't be tactical, but the tactics will be grounded more in action gameplay - for instance, you do get tactically rewarded for swapping between stances based on the makeup of each encounter, or for tactically using your abilities to their greatest effect. But at its heart we've focused the game on fun, deep, action RPG combat. It's hard to say where we fall in the DMC->Dynasty Warriors spectrum. I think we're actually on a slightly different path, because we are a lot deeper in terms of ability and stat customization than either game, really, and we have a bigger emphasis on tactical ability/stance selection and a smaller emphasis on reflexes and timing gameplay than games like DMC and Dynasty Warriors. So, I guess my hope is that DSIII will feel like it's on a different spectrum, even though it's got a few similarities to those games.

Something that seems to frequently come up when discussing the design of a game system is whether or not some aspect of that system adheres to reality. Or, more precisely, whether the outcomes of that system accurately simulate the results that the person making the argument expects, based on their particular interpretation of reality. Generally, these arguments come from players, or from non-designers, or less experienced designers, and will take the form of, "But XXXX isn't realistic!" or "Realistically, YYYY should happen instead". And, frequently, experienced game designers will turn around and say "Who cares?" and merrily go on their way designing an "unrealistic" system. I wanted to give a quick explanation of why this is, explain what role I see realism as having in game design, and then provide a bit of a defense of "realism" as it relates to something I call the "responsibility of expectations" that is placed on any game design. First - game designers primarily ignore or devalue realism because their primary goal is rarely to construct an accurate simulation of a real world. At their core, game systems are sets of rules that encourage and discourage, or reward and punish, certain choices within the game versus others. In establishing both what choices players can take, as well as the rules effects of those choices, designers are generally attempting to create a system which a) avoids "dominance" b) provides opportunities for players to differentiate their strategies based on the decisions they take, and c) give players opportunities to make "good plays" in response to opponents (be they computer or human controlled). As a very basic example, take armor in Fallout: New Vegas. Wearing Light Armor has strengths (you move faster) and weaknesses (you absorb less damage). Wearing heavy armor has the opposite effects. Heavy armor does not dominate Light Armor, even though it performs better at its core functionality, because there are cases in which moving faster is more important than absorbing damage. For a more complex example, because the game uses subtractive DT, low DAM weapons are disproportionately affected by DT. So, for instance, if a creature has 5 DT, going from a 6 DAM weapon to a 7 DAM weapon doubles your damage (your actual damage goes from 1 to 2). Whereas, if that same creature had 0 DT, going from a 6 to a 7 DAM weapon is only a 1/6 increase. This is an example of how you can encourage the player to make "smart plays" - when fighting an enemy in light or no armor, you are encouraged to use your highest DPS weapon regardless of its DAM. Whereas, when fighting an enemy in heavy armor, you want to select a weapon with enough DAM to significantly overcome its DT while still having enough DPS to deal substantial damage over time. When combined with the other properties of weapons (range, rate of fire, spread, etc.) you end up with an interesting matrix of choices in which players are encouraged to find the optimal weapon for any given situation. No weapon is dominant, players can select from a group of weapons they like based on their own personal playstyle, and there are opportunities for players to maximize their effectiveness through smart play. These are the core goals of most game designs. Many games have other additional goals, and simulating reality is sometimes one of those goals. But when you evaluate a system from the perspective of someone trying to create as good a game as possible, these goals are paramount. The problem with realism is that, in reality, there are strongly dominant options. Catch 22's exist. I can't imagine ever wanting to bring a knife to a gunfight. If I was going to be venturing into the Mojave wasteland, you bet your ass I'd want to only wear the heaviest power armor I could find and only use the biggest gun I had... plus I wouldn't have an invisible backpack full of other weapons I get to choose to optimize my damage in other situations. So, often, the goals of realism and the goals of quality game design conflict, and in almost all cases realism is cast aside. That explains why realism is so often ignored. However, there are two cases where realism is important - first, in creating a sense of "verisimilitude", and second, in dealing with the responsibility of expectations. Verisimilitude is a term that, like "truthiness", I'll use to mean the extent to which something "feels realistic", even if it is not. For instance, again, I'll use eating, drinking and sleep deprivation, in F:NV's Hardcore Mode (if Hardcore mode is off, these features are not present). These may not actually realistically simulate the mechanics by which a person becomes starved, dehydrated or sleep deprived. The rates, and effects, are almost certainly not identical to what you'd encounter in real-life. However, the fact that I am thinking about food and water in the wasteland, and the fact that I am happy whenever I find a delicious, delicious fresh barrel cactus fruit, gives my journey through the wasteland a taste of reality. Not realism, but "truthiness", or vertisimilitude. Note that these aren't really mechanics that work as I described above. It is a strongly dominant option to have water, and to drink it when you get thirsty. It's not really a valid playstyle to be "the guy that never drinks water". But, in this case, it is a small enough part of the system and has enough of a positive effect on verisimilitude that it's worth having the system, IMO. Finally, when players approach a game, they come both with their own personal baggage/knowledge, and they form opinions on things in your game before they ever interact with the actual gameplay of those things. As two examples, I'll use Civilization and Power Armor. First - in Civilization, one of the most common complaints has been the situation where 1000 spearman defeats a tank. It seems ridiculous that something like that would even be possible. Yet, in the game rules, it is clearly an outcome that is possible, and tailoring the rules to avoid that outcome could have deleterious effects on the actual gameplay, in which case it may not be worth it. In fact, allowing lower-tech units beat higher-tech units helps avoid over-rewarding players that fast-tech and start off isolated - if tech was as dominating in Civ as it is in the real world, the game would not be much fun, even though it would be more realistic. However, players do come with that expectation, and that is something you have to deal with - so the ideal solution would be one in which the balance of the game isn't ruined but spearmen can't, in fact, beat tanks, because players come into the game with expectations and preconceived notions, and it's generally a bad idea to violate them (unless you're trying to make a point in violating them, which is maybe a bit too post-modern for a video game). Next, let's take the example of Power Armor in F3. None of us knows how Power Armor works in "reality". So, our preconceived notions aren't about the actual function of the armor, but instead the weight that it's given in the art and lore of the world. When, in the intro movie to F3, the camera trucks out to reveal the fully power-armored soldier, you can't help but think "Wow, that guy is a badass. I bet that armor is awesome!" If, in the game, you then found that armor, and it was barely better than leather armor, you would be disappointed because your expectations had been violated - the game art wrote a check that the mechanics couldn't cash - and that's a drawback even if the game works perfectly well as a game that way! This is something that Rob Pardo talked about at the last GDC - it's important that you respect the fantasy in your game and not violate it through the game mechanics.

Not in Obsidian's Dungeon Siege, baby. By the way, any info on how exactly the teleportation system works? Is that screenshot with the floaty landmass in a sea of blue the area where you fight enemies before teleporting? We need an answer Nathaniel! AN ANSWEEEEER!! The floaty landmass is part of a "world between worlds" that you use to travel long distances quickly.

Was the inventory shown? Were you at the gc? Do you have a picture? Can you explain the inventory? Yup, I saw it at the gamescom. I don't know if im allowed to talk about it, if I am, I will gladly tell you about it, and maybe even make a sketch of it. I dont have pictures, we weren't allowed to take pics, but I do have a nice inflatable sword with the DS3 logo on it, and a Fallout: New Vegas shirt . Did you sign an NDA? If not, you're allowed to talk about anything you want! I'm the one that's not supposed to talk about anything!

No, that's correct It was a very simple quest mostly there to just show off the breadcrumbing feature, which is directly tied to your quests.

I suspect you won't have to wait too long

We actually had video from our E3 demo on the floor of Gamescom

I hope I've been clear that I'm talking about the console controls for the game, not the PC controls. We will probably not use the same auto-targetting on PC and console. I also think, if you look at how this kind auto-targetting functions in other games, it's not "random" at all. You press the stick in the direction of the guy you want to attack, press the attack button, and you attack them. I don't think there's much else I can say to elucidate the subject: - We want our PC version to play like a PC game, and our console version to play like a console game. - We don't want to cram inappropriate controls from one platform onto the other. - We don't ever want it to be hard to physically connect your attacks with enemies. That's not at all intended to be a challenge in our game. Therefore, we have some auto-targetting logic on the Console version that makes sure your attacks line up properly and you don't miss by a couple of degrees. - We don't want it to feel like the game is playing itself, we want you to feel "in control". That's actually what the auto-targetting is designed to help. - Our auto-targetting on console versions will not dumb the game down any more than click-to-move pathfinding dumbs down a PC game. If anything, pathfinding dumbs the game down more. - We want to allow you to ground target AoEs in both the Console and PC versions of the game, and we currently have a method of doing this on the console that we're pretty happy with. Obviously on the PC it's pretty standard to allow you to ground target AoEs, so we'll probably do that the way you are familiar with from other games like, say, NWN2

You guessed it! There are other cool things about the stance system, but that's the fundamental sauce.

By the way, if you find this discussion at all intriguing I strongly recommend you pick up Devil May Cry 4 or Bayonetta and play them all the way through. They're actually really rewarding, enjoyable games once you figure out how they work and get good at them. Plus you'll understand better what I'm talking about

There's no auto-attack, maybe I need to be a bit clearer. Functionally, if you've played Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry, this system works exactly like those games. Say you are playing the game on a console. If you point your stick in the direction of an enemy and press attack, the game will steer you so you line up with the target perfectly rather than letting you miss by 5-10 degrees. It will always select the target closest to where you pointed the stick, so it's not going to point you at an enemy you didn't intend to attack (unless you're giving bad input, heh). The game will not autoattack for you, you must press the button every time you want to attack the target. The reason why this is important is that players are actually quite bad at giving precise stick input, particularly when they are mapping the 2D analog stick coordinates into 3D space in their head. There was a really interesting talk at the last GDC by one of the developers at I believe Sucker Punch (the guys that made inFAMOUS) in which the developer set up a very simple test where a character was rendered in a very simple Grey Box 3D environment from a standard 3/4 view. A red ball would appear at a random point about 3 meters out from the character. The player had to try to align his stick with the ball (without onscreen feedback), and the game secretly recorded how much their stick input diverged from the actual ball in degrees. The test revealed that actually stick input diverged quite a lot - up to about 10 or 15 degrees, with a median of around -3 degrees (which is really bizarre, I have no explanation for that). Those numbers might not be exact, I don't have the talk on hand, but the point is that players are a lot less accurate than they think (and than developers think) when it comes to pointing out directions in 3D space using analog sticks. Rather than force you to struggle with the fact that it's actually a really hard math puzzle to map your 2D stick coordinates in 3D space, we fudge it a little, because the point of most of these games is not to force you to point your analog stick literally perfectly in order to even hit a target. In a platformer, it might be more acceptable to forego automatic course correction because the core challenge in those games *is* to perfectly line up the target (and they usually give the player a decent amount of wiggle room - you don't have to hit an exact spot when you jump). But in DS3, like in NG2 and DMC, the challenge comes from how/when/how often/who you attack and choosing what attacks you use. We don't intend for the challenge to be in actually being able to physically connect with attacks. If you think of this in PC game terms, actually, you get this auto-targetting automatically from the pathfinding system. When I click a monster in Diablo/Torchlight/NWN2, the pathfinding system takes over and not only aligns me to my target but actually navigates me there automatically!

I don't think that auto-targetting inherently makes a game a brainless button masher. This is not an FPS, the core gameplay is not aiming, auto-aim has literally no relevance to the depth of the game. Isn

I don't think that auto-targetting inherently makes a game a brainless button masher. This is not an FPS, the core gameplay is not aiming, auto-aim has literally no relevance to the depth of the game.

Was that your "professional" response? No, I sincerely thought you were joking.

haha

We use essentially the same auto-targetting system as Ninja Gaiden 2 (the 3D one, not the NES one). I don't think anyone would consider that game dumbed down

That's... interesting O_O

You will be able to make the game look much, much better on PC than it will on consoles, much like other cross platform games. The game looks amazing at 2560x1440 with FSAA and AF cranked, and that is something that you can't do on consoles. Seeing as the game is in pre alpha, and our featureset isn't even locked down, I wouldn't get too worried yet about what we will and won't support on a given platform :D If it makes you feel any better, I've got a souped up PC at home (which is why I know how it looks at those ridiculous settings) and I advocate for our PC versions to be scalable graphically. It's something that I do feel is very important.

First, I'm not sure if it was an initial communication confusion or the haze of Google translation, but there were some miscommunications there. On the textures and AA option, what I said was that our current pre-Alpha build, we havent finished our options menu and we are still focusing on getting the core game content done. Once we finish the core process of making the Game, we'll be able to give definitive answers on other features and tech things we will or won't implement.

Those are projectiles launched by those skeleton guys in the corners. They're actually pretty mean because they track you very slightly, so you have to dodge around them while fighting stuff in the center of the room if you don't take out the guys on the corners. One thing we've found with enemy spells is that it helps to make them a bit "over the top" visually so that the player notices them in the heat of combat.

I'm glad you guys are getting more screens, these ones are more representative of the game camera/gameplay than the others you've seen!