[Class design and combat performance]

I don't think there's anything wrong with players giving up combat prowess for more out-of-combat prowess - like making a "charismatic cripple" character, who basically relies on his whole party to protect him while he stands in the back. I mean, this kind of character works in a game like Fallout, where your party size is dependent on your charisma score.

 

But yes, all classes should potentially be capable in combat, for a variety of combat scenarios.

[Mass effect Trilogy]

I've seen that chart. It still doesn't explain the ME1-ME3 deal. I mean, the whole marketing ploy I thought - was that your choices would carry over. So it would stand to reason, you'd write a plot for 3 games, or at least have some idea what the next two games would be about. If BW can only re-use the same tropes, they could have just EXTENDED those same tropes over 3 games, instead of having it all contained in one game. Or you could have the same plot 3 times, with slightly different details to throw people off. But they didn't even do that.

[Could the value of attributes be made more tangible?]

World of Darkness has a lot of damage systems though. You have aggravated, lethal, and blunt (and I think one more?). WoD is also significantly less focused around combat than D&D. Although I've never played the PNP game, judging from its mechanics, I'd hazard that combat is very fast-paced and quick? It shouldn't last very long, given the low life pools of everybody involved.

 

I think it's very hard to create a system which is both fun and mirrors some kind of realistic logic. Yes, it's weird that a 11 hitpoint character can become a character with 10 times those hitpoints, but I don't think it's making things too weird - someone with 11 hitpoints obviously isn't very skilled at combat. When they get hit, they obviously don't know how to mitigate the damage they take. Of course, a sword to the chest is probably going to kill ANYONE who isn't protected by some crazy magic - it's hard to simulate combat in any meaningful manner when it must happen in copious amounts, to a small number of combatants.

 

In real life, combat is QUICK. A fight between two street thugs can be decided in one punch usually. People mugging somebody - the conflict is over in under thirty seconds. Two martial artists are exhausted after a minute's worth of fighting. Warriors clash in giant waves and slaughter each other, they grow tired even quicker. Encounters in a video game can last several minutes - where players trade a large number of blows. Where players block a large number of blows. It takes just as much energy to block or parry a blow, as it does to get hit by one. It takes a lot of energy just to evade and dodge an attack. Fighting is tough and tiring, even for someone who is at their peak of physical fitness.

 

If we're aiming for realism, you can only replicate that kind of thing in a game where combat is something you can actively avoid, where mortality is high and so is replayability. Because you'll be dying/losing a lot, when fights come down to who gets the first blow, or who can land a devastating counter-offensive. I don't think it lends itself well to cRPG design and that combat in a game like this IS an abstraction of real combat. It's an attempt to make combat more "fair and regular". Because dice rolls are random, or at least for cRPGs, psuedo-random. When you extend a fight out to 2+ minutes of casting spells, swinging sword and absorbing blows, it reduces the effects of chance and makes things feel impactful and fair. In real life, the loser is often left confused as to what happened. The victor might not even remember or understand how he won the fight, it was so clutch, so fast, so reactionary, so random.

 

Although I'm not a fan of the game of throne's series, this youtube video isn't too far off from how a drawn-out fight can happen.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZSFpeLEAok

 

As you can see, the obvious strategy used here was "wearing down the opponent". Attacking causes heavy fatigue, especially when it's wild and unskillful. You don't see this accurately represented in most games, where attacking a lot leaves you significantly vulnerable due to fatigue. But it's probably one of the major strategies in any 1v1 combat, medieval or modern. I'm not so sure this is "fun" for a cRPG, though it might be fun to simulate such systems for an action/fighting game.

[Wasteland 2 to contain some real science]

Well... bronies exist. And so does Dragon Age 2. Only things such as these could come to pass if magic were involved, at least by proxy. Perhaps that's not sufficiently scientific, but you'd be hard pressed to apply the scientific method to events caused by mind control, hexes and witch craft.

[Mass effect Trilogy]

Here's what we thought BioWare did: During the pre-production of ME1, they created an overarching narrative that would span 3 games. They didn't flesh out the details for the next two games, obviously, but had a large plot schematic in mind.

 

Here's what BioWare actually did: They threw together ME1's story on the seat of their pants, forgot they were going to make all these choices matter in the next two games, then forgot they were going to need to make adjustments for gameplay changes with the world they were creating in the first game, then realized that they didn't actually have any writers on the team and got some people from the programming team to help write during their lunch breaks. And then they started producing the second game, realized they couldn't deliver on any of the promises they had made originally. They were bought out by EA so they said the hell with it and just started writing stream-of-conscious style. Pooped out a script and handed it to the game devs to grinder into a game.

[The Role of Rogues?]

You can choke people out as a bouncer? Man, I'd love to live where you do I'm surprised nobody has tried to sue you for 'almost killing them' or something.

 

I think that... people like the tropes rogues have been associated with in the past, but I don't think they like being FORCED into those trope-y roles. I think an ideal system - which is probably what we won't get with PE - would allow rogue-classes a lot of flexibility. Some rogues are just like the rogues you can play as in WOW, they go invisible in the middle of nowhere and stab people from behind for massive damage.

 

There are other kinds of rogues than that though, and you could build a character such that they hide in plain sight, are very suave, use potions/toxins, or use deadly stealth-magic or just magic in general. A rogue could be a rogue mage, someone who is very skilled in magic, but perhaps identifies more with sneaking than with throwing fireballs around.

 

A system which allows for high flexibility is very ideal, because I think it's unfair to think that all rogues should sneak, or all rogues should pick pockets and break into houses, and that all rogues should wear leather or be suave. They might have one or two of these qualities, but not all of them.

 

A class-based, skill-based system should offer a finite, but diverse, arrangement of passive/active skills one can specialize in, to create a rogue that is unique. One can assure not perfect uniqueness, but near uniqueness, by offering at least 20-40 active skills (where a player can choose at least 5-10 of them from the lot) and at least 30-60 passive skills/feats (that are generalized enough that you're not shoehorned into only taking specific ones). 30! + 29! + 28! + etc + 45! + 44! + 43! etc. is a pretty big number and I think allows for sufficient complexity to player class development, when you balance the game right.

 

Granted, there will be some overlap, it is a bit much to ask for 20-40 active skills from the team, for as many classes that are intended, but if classes can have some overlap, then some active skills should be shared between classes. But what I am imagining is:

 

Let's say this sytem allows for a given class to take 5 active skills at level 1 and 5 more over the next 10-20 levels of advancement (and let's say the terminal level is 20~).

 

I could make a mage rogue with

 

Greater Invisibility (spell)

Backstab (attack)

Fireball (spell)

Pickpocket (skill)

Smokebomb (utility skill)

 

And let's say you can take 7 passive skills at level 1 and take another 7 over the next 10-20 levels.

 

Detect invisible

Detect Traps

Persuasive

Lady Killer

Dual Wielding

Parry

Toughness

 

I'd say this accurately describes a basic rogue character type. They are trained and spells and if the player puts more points into intelligence, not only can they advance the strength of their existing spells, they can pick more powerful active spells as they level their character. They can also take more spell-based passives. They may not want some ridiculous spell though, and might stop developing those skills at level 10, when they focus on improving their damage dual-wield damage.

 

So the system I'm envisioning is probably not too far and away from how D&D works, just that it's more flexible than D&D. A rogue class has a restricted pool of active and passive skills, but this pool is very broad. A rogue probably won't have access to the variety and depth of magic as a mage-class, but perhaps a Rogue might have special access to wand or staff specialization, becoming a hybrid attacker-spell caster, with active and passive skills that emphasize dual-wielding wands, instead of daggers. Or something.

[South Park delayed?]

Yeah. I'm under the impression the game is almost done. People would have to be pretty stupid not to invest in the game at this point, if THQ goes under.

 

That said, I'm not so sure the south park RPG is going to do well. It might make enough to satify some short-term investor, but someone like THQ who wants millions... south park was such a weird IP to go with. It doesn't exactly mesh with the RPG crowd either, the kind of people who are thoroughly sick of South Park, probably.

[On Pacifism & the nonlethal takedown]

Fallout 2 has a perfect pacifist run where you never kill anyone. It can be done. The thing is, you can't obviously expect pacifism to work in all situations. It works in FO2 because you don't need to complete every quest, complete every objective, do /everything/ in order to beat the game or major parts of the story. Or if you do, there is a non-aggressive means to doing it.

 

As for knocking out enemies... I think it's fine, though it poses a balance problem. Sleeping darts and knockout magic are probably potent (are we expecting players to shoot people with 20 darts before they finally keel over?), so to balance their potency, they probably need to be risky or expensive to use.

 

I also think that knocked out opponents should be able to regain consciousness under some circumstances, otherwise there's little difference between killing someone and knocking them out. Which feels lame (as Dishonored recently demonstrates).

[Tony Evans leaving Obsidian for BioWare]

Volorun, you're infamous. You know that? From what I've read about you, you're just playing an act. You're not actually a BioWare fanboy, but someone pretending to be. As some kind of parody? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law? What say you in response?

 

I think you're actually an Obsidian fanboy reverse-trolling BioWare fanboys by acting like one.

[Best way to learn programming?]

If you're new to coding, here is some very helpful advice that won't ever steer you wrong:

 

If it compiles, it works.

[Wasteland 2 to contain some real science]

verisimilitude

 

Too lazy to try and spell it in my previous post, too lazy to google the spelling of said word.

[Mass effect Trilogy]

Of course it won't. Mass Effect is their attempt to sneak into the Gears of Duty: Battlefield Warfare Ops market. They would sooner drop all its RPG trappings than make it more like a strategic/tactical top-down cRPG.

 

Dragon Age 3 stands a better chance of being good, but I'm pretty sure BW is after people of another crowd - the same crowd that supported PE is not the same crowd BW/EA wants purchasing its games. They believe that market is too small. Or, if it's not too small, they can't milk it like they can the Sports/FPS market, with near-identical releases every 9-12 months.

[[merged] Sui Generis Kickstarter]

I don't know. The whole appeal seems to be real-time combat, I don't see how JA2 would be great for an engine like that - though I'd love to see a proper JA3 get made.

 

This kickstarter is interesting - I like the tech. But without much of a game plan, it's hard to support the developers. I mean, Obsidian scarcely gave us anything, but they could ride on their reputation that they'd have a game worth making. Sui Generis has a cool engine, but from the alpha combat... it seems like they don't really know what kind of RPG it will be. It seems like an ARPG, but those kinds of RPGs tend to be on the shallow-side of RPG mechanics, at least, they're more about finding items, than actually roleplaying a character.

 

This is the problem with most video game kickstarters. They give you some good information, but usually not enough to render a verdict. Obsidian didn't give us enough concrete facts up front and had to scramble in updates to elaborate. These guys give us a neat engine, but don't elaborate on the game systems that control your roleplaying experience.

[Mass effect Trilogy]

But to be frank, yes, I think a lot of people hate on EA because it's "cool" to do so.

 

I think it's hip to hate on people who hate on EA. Stop trying to be cool.

[RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS!]

Consoles use out-dated hardware. Crappy hardware.

 

The only reason they can even play some games better than the PC, is because developers spend a lot of time optimizing their game/engine for console hardware (and not PC hardware). And of course, consoles have limited overhead because they don't have to run an operating system.

 

If you spend 1000 euros and your computer doesn't last you four years - you bought a bad computer (or you were scammed or you just had horribly bad luck). Simple as that. You can buy a $400-600 USD computer today that will run next gen games at low/medium quality for at least 4 years.

 

Of course, if you disagree, then you're welcome to believe that consoles are using some magical, mystical custom-developed hardware.

 

But if the consoles just up and died, we'd probably get better games for the PC that run just as well as they do today.

[RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS!]

Um, well when BioWare made BG it had Black Isle helping them, so BW itself could have been as small as 15.

 

As for the news, I find it funny. How does John Spaghettio's still have his job again? They spent all that money buying BioWare - a company with a strong implcit brand name. They then used that asset to brand other smaller studios and give them prestiege. They then asked BioWare to **** all over its reputation, branding other companies with a negative image.

 

I guess there's something to this you learn in Business school. It could be all apart of a larger plan we're missing? Nobody can be this stupid unintentionally.

[Wasteland 2 to contain some real science]

Fantasy worlds; fantasy RPGs; hell, RPGs in general need PLAUSIBILITY. You can set the game in some cartoony hell-hole that uses non-euclidean space and is populated by anthromorphic weasel ancient-astronauts and I'll buy it if the story is PLAUSIBLE and set up in a manner in which the audience can suspend their disbelief.

 

Having good, accurate scientific foundation or good, consistent writing can suffice for having "realism". Unfortunately, the games we DO NOT like, tend to have neither.

 

A game being designed with 'realism' is not a bad thing, but a game's purpose is not to simulate life, but to simulate aspects of it that result in fun or entertainment.

[Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?]

Skyrim crafting is the perfect example of WOW-inspired crafting. Then again, Skyrim's gameplay design is largely non-existent. A good game design question is, "Did Skyrim do this?" If yes, then don't do it - especially if you're designing PE.

 

Yes, Skyrim sold a ton - but that was largely due to marketing, branding, and the fact it delivered on what people wanted from the game: a huge open world with stupid **** to do in it. People would have more thoroughly enjoyed the game if it had been balanced better, if its combat weren't so trivial, and... other problems it has.

[Anti-Dragon Age 2?]

GG is kind of overrated. You should.

 

Now, Moby ****. That's not something you can touch.

[President Obama]

Neither candidate had/has articulated a solution to the US's problems, be they economic or foreign policy. The whole election was a farce, as usual. We got nothing done and wasted a whole lot more money doing it.

 

I guess the thing that bothers me most... is Obama is for gay rights, right? He did nothing this term save for stating that he supports gay rights - and then does nothing to push that agenda. Really? Politics is just so baffling to me. How anyone can not be jaded like me at this point, seems alien or insane. These people will promise the world and then sit on their hands, or make the worst decisions under the most nonsensical reasoning (yes Obama, please spin that terrorist attack as them protesting a stupid third-rate movie).

[Magic Mechanics that annoy you]

In BG2, golems were basically immune to weapons not of a certain weapon damage threshold or greater. They were also basically immune to spells without a spell tor remove that.

 

I think spell/physical immune enemies add a fun element to strategy - but they should not be in abundance.

 

And in ARPGs (like Diablo), immune enemies suck. Or at least, enemies that can be immune to multiple things. One immunity is probably enough. Never go over two. Diablo 3 is infamous for its random monsters that spawned with all the "immune" mods on them (humorously invulnerable).

 

Spells that grant temporary immunity or invulnerability are fine.

[Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?]

I guess BG2 is an interesting example. There's "crafting" to an extent... I mean, it wouldn't be deep, but I DID like the multi-headed mace crafting. It was simple, "secret", and very narrowly purposed. You found the pieces, you "crafted" the mace. And then later on in the expansion you could upgrade it by finding other heads to graft onto it. That would probably a very good crafting system - where you hide 20 or so unique weapons in the game, and they can be constructed by finding the necessary rare parts. The craft is more or less a hidden quest though, it's not like the crafting system in NWN or a TES game.

 

That kind of crafting system... I mean, the way I would personally attempt to implement it (I probably wouldn't implement a crafting system into a single player RPG if I were making one)... would be...

 

1. NPCs do crafting for you, there's no silly skill level you need to raise up (it just feels to grind-y and purpsoeless for a SP RPG)

2. You find NPCs who are willing to make things for you, they tell you what they need to craft mundane items for you. You pay a comission, and you craft stuff that way.

a) You can request certain design elements of a item when you craft it (the result is, the weapon you get might have +10% attack rate, or have some specific stat on it that you want, but this sort of thing should probably be semi-random - you can only ask for something and get a vague stat in return)

b) You can request things to be grafted/imbeded/socketed in the crafted item (the result is, a more generic effect that is predictable)

 

The purpose for that is so that you can't easily get the best items through crafting. And well, because crafted gear would be semi-random, it would be "different" from quest/found gear. When an item "differs" rather than strictly being better/worse, you have a more balanced item system I think. Obviously Obsidian will make many custom items to drop in the wild - but what if I make a Warrior character who likes to use Intel/Wisdom-based swords? That give bonus spell damage? Well, you should be able to craft such a thing, perhaps? By socketing certain things and requesting certain design choices from the crafter.

3. Rarer, more unique things can be crafted by finding rare NPCs and giving them rare items, similar to how crafting worked in BG2 I guess - I mean, that system wasn't perfect, but it was reasonable and didn't feel like too much of a hassle and finding secrets is reasonably entertaining

4. Don't make crafting about gathering iron ingots? That just feels like menial work. A crafter probably has all the iron he needs and he'll charge you a premium for it. He might need some rare schema to make an advanced weapon, or a special kind of leather or chemical, to make something special for you though.

5. If souls are the theme, perhaps souls should be the crafting focus too. Dark/Demon's Souls have an extensive crafting system that's kind of fun - using souls. You can only use boss souls once, so you have to chose a unique fabrication of a given soul. That's like choosing one special reward for an important quest, so it's kind of interesting.

 

I guess the key thing for me, is that WOW-based crafting gets you this generic or pointless item that's already worthless the moment you've made it - you probably could have bought the item itself cheaper than the ingrdients alone. Fun crafting is arriving at a semi-unique, semi-precious creation all your own, or something that's just one-of-a-kind that you chose from a selection of possibilities.

[Dragon Age: Origins]

I haven't played DA:O in a long time, but I'm replaying DA2 right now in order to make a video highlighting its gameplay short-comings. Hopefully, so people won't make these same sort of mistakes again.

 

What I'm noticing about DA2 as I analyze it... is, well, let me name all of the kinds of enemies in the game:

 

rogues/thieves/bandits/slavers/whatever - humans with bows or sword+shield

abominations/undead/demons - otherworldly things that attack with fists or bows

spiders - spiders

mages - things that cast spells

commander enemies - big humans with giant life pools

bosses - there are like 4 or 5, off the top of my head

 

And that's like... it. I haven't finished replaying the game yet, but there is zero enemy variety in Dragon Age 2. You have melee fighters, ranged attackers, and spell casters. The spellcasters ALL use the same spells (they have an instant vanish/teleport spell, an invulnerability shield, a force-based area of effect damage spell, and a single target damage spell) and they all use them in the same predictable ways.

 

Spiders? Do they use poison-based debuffs? Do they even imbed you with webbing? Nope. You can step in "web traps" that are laid out before encounters begin, and there are poison-based things the PC can get - but enemies never actively debuff you. Enemy spell casters use a very narrow margin of skills. And melee/bow enemies fight IDENTICALLY. There is no difference between fighting a pack of rogues and a pack of spiders - they fight in the exact same mannerisms. Completely awful design - it makes the game monotonous. There is one strategy you employ throughout the entire ****ing game.

 

The second awful thing is difficulty. All difficulty does is inflate damage per second and health pools. That's it. It's retarded. To fight that dragon towards the end of the game on the highest difficulty is like a 10-20 minute affair of you walking backwards, kiting the dumb thing with a full ranged party. There's no strategy, it's just a giant pin-cushion. Higher difficulty levels should a) turn on more advanced enemy AI b) allow enemies access to more skills/abilities c) increase enemy diversity

 

BG2 on the other hand, please, someone else do it for me - I don't want to try and count all the number of kinds of enemies and spells they can do. There are brain-eaters who can 2hko anybody, hulks with a chaos-spell, beholders - ridiculously lethal magic-resistant spellcasters, dragons, etc. - encounters are very diverse, even if in a particular zone, enemy diversity might be relatively low.

 

I'd say, Dragon Age Origins - at least from my memory of it - does only a few things well. If the game is as similar as DA2, which I know it's not entirely similar, but they bear similarities, then it is just too streamlined to take much from. Much of DA:O feels like it was inspired to appeal to WOW players and not BG players.

 

Anything you can learn from DAO can probably be learned from examining WOW, I'd rather we ask Obsidian to examine BG/BG2 and the other IE games instead, than try to extract something from DAO, which feels like an unsuccessful attempt to emulate what was great about the IE games. Or perhaps even a rejection of them - thinking that the 'modern gamer' can't handle the things they used to.

[Unwinnable Encounters?]

I like the idea.

 

But I cannot name a game which has ever executed this well.

 

As a "tutorial fight" or something - that's fine, but out of the blue, to encounter an enemy you cannot defeat, who will always beat you - it's confusing. It breaks the 4th wall at times. You eventually go, "Oh! I'm supposed to lose this." And then you do.

 

There isn't anything more to it and the point of the idea is totally lost. Yes, helplessness and overturning the player's sense of power is great - but having an unwinnable encounter fails to bring out the desired impact in almost any game.

[Realism: does it matter?]

A well-constructed setting is paramount. If it feels real, that is ideal. We don't want any "unbelievable" scenarios or characters. Realism is paramount.

 

It doesn't need to be "real" in relation to our "real" world - just because armor type X doesn't exist in our world, doesn't mean it can't in the fantasy setting. But I should expect things to have similarities to our world, they should not be so totally alien that we cannot accept them or become immersed in the setting.

 

And you can't use fun as an excuse, by the way - a game being fun is a very abstract concept. I think a game becomes fun when you can become immersed in its emergent world. That requires the world be real. If you cannot accept the world, you won't be immersed, you won't have fun. A cartoony world, a crazy zany world, can be accepted - but it has to be presented in a good manner to succeed.