anubite
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Posts posted by anubite
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I honestly think that cave should make a reappearance. It'd be a funny easter egg or somethin'. They could even have a line like, "I'm having an odd feeling of deja vu here..."
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We need a strong transgender female deep complex antagonist that threatens the entire universe but really doesn't because we kind of want a down-to-earth personal story because games don't need to be epic to be good. She can't be too strong, because then you can't hate her, but she can't be too weak, because she has to offer a gripping, compelling point of view. She can't be too feminine, because females can't be too feminine in video games. She can't be too non-feminine because that's probably masculine and a masculine transgender female is skirting over the issues surrounding feminimity in video games. She has to be complex but not too complex, but simple is kind of good (like Star Wars) but she can't be too simple because then nobody will say our game is deep, so she needs to be complex too. Oh, and she can't be transgender, I mean, she will be, but you just won't mention it - making it a big deal undermines the whole diversity argument, but it kind of has to be hinted at because games don't have enough sexually unique antangonists. But she can't be too unique, because people might get the wrong idea that we're stereotyping or making hyperbole of sexual orientation or gender identity. Also, she has to be cool, because all good antagonists are cool. But, she can't be too cool, because, well, you know - she's just a hipster if she's too cool.
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On the PC, you just hold down N to 'save' anything you've stolen.
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What is the minimum acceptable amount of dialog you want AI to have?
How much does it matter to you that an AI has accurate and specific details about history?
How many AI enabled NPC should there be in any NPC group?
Is it acceptable for AIs to use their advantages to dominate you?
What matters more: AI that strives to be creative or AI that goes with the best strategy based on a situation?
Finally would you be willing to accurately process the AI enabled NPCs even when they are not visible to the player ?
Firstly, I think it's a little misleading how you're phrasing these questions. There is no video game AI on earth that gives NPCs "accurate and specific details about history" - even Dwarf Fortress - game that's practically one of a kind in terms of actors know about the world they live in... an individual dwarf does not "know" probably more than who his parents are and the day to day dealings of his own life. And besides Dwarf Fortress, I can't think of a single game, let alone an RPG, where each actor in the world has any awareness of history that isn't hardcoded into a script some writer made.
If you just mean, how many dialog options each actor has, and not how much they actually "know" through some artificial intelligence, then I think it really depends. I would prefer as much breadth and depth as possible, but I'm willing to sacrifice breadth for depth. I don't expect to learn what Molly the Baker does for a living, or how she's feeling today (though such things could be easily simulated) for a general wRPG (for a fantasy life simulator, I might wish to know such things), but I do want a generally true-to-life take on her character - she shouldn't feel like a prop. Or at least, such NPCs should be fleshed out in whatever little dialogue they are given, with the budgets writers have.
I don't really understand your third question. How big should a group of hostile enemies be? I like large battles, but large battles tend to emphasize area of effect spells/attacks (and usually diminish the importance of a single character). They should be small. For non-hostile groups? Potentially as big as can be properly plotted for. I don't think largeness really adds much value for itself, but lots of good content is a winner.
Enemies should utilize the proper heuristic for the proper difficulty. If it's on the hardest difficulty, I expect AI algorithims to find the best possible approach and utilize it flawlessly.
AIs that are creative offer interesting gameplay situations - but a creative AI is an intelligent one. You wouldn't use a creative strategy that is less effective than a simple one, the effect of creativity or surprise should outweigh the effectiveness of a simple strategy. A good AI I think has a bit of randomness to it - it will switch between "most effeicent choice" and "most creative choice", doing neither exclusively. The goal of this is to vary gameplay.
Your last question is very confusing - if we're talking about Project Eternity I don't expect much at all to be simulated while actors are not present. Obsidian does not have the budget to build Mount and Blade + Dwarf Fortress + Baldur's Gate all in one game here. In an "ideal perfect RPG" I would like the game's engine to update the lives of actors everywhere, to update the state of economy and trade in the realm as well, much likfe Dwarf Fortress or Mount and Blade. But I don't expect this in a title being strung on a shoestring nor do I expect it from a successor to Baldur's Gate, which had none of that.
The problem with this "ideal perfect simulated world RPG" though, with full relationship, history, and economic simulation... we don't have the processing power in a single computer for that yet - not for a world that has as few as 1000 inhabitants.
Every entity has a relationship with /repsect to time/ with at least one other entity.
Every entity has a relationship with the economy.
Every entity must have three-dimensional path finding when they are on the present map.
Every entity must have problem solving when they are interacting with the player's hostile actions.
A system like this almost sounds like some big database problem - actors are all interconnected and we want frame-by-frame updates to what they're going to do. What they're going to do effects the world and how the world changes effects what they're going to do. This is incredibly expensive - definitely do-able on modern hardware, but to render graphics on top of this? I don't think so.
Nevermind that it would be very hard to write a linear sort of story for players in such a chaotic world as this. And we really haven't solve that whole linguistics problem with AI yet. Doubtless, such a thing won't be cheap to implement either.
If you don't believe me, get 200 dwarfs in Dwarf Fortress. A good i5 can handle it, but the frames start dropping. My old Core 2 Duo couldn't handle more than 50 dwarfs.
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I think it's interesting so many horror games have appeared on Kickstarter since july. The second attempt at eternal darkness, Tangiers, etc.
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Infinite's greatest crime was they built a large floating city you weren't allowed to interact with. The fact chosing to hit a slave with a projectile was a Quick Time Event...
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*In the right way.
But BioWare is an EA company, so they are basically ruled by people in managerial/marketing positions. If they get their hands on statistics, we'll see the culling of entire necessary features because 'the numbers justify it'. This is why the decision to make DA2 a 1-year cycle game was made in the first place.
I'm arguing a moot point though - I guess it's inevitable. It won't be long until all games are like this, where developers receive detailed "feedback" about player behavior, designing the game around such data.
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They definitely are doing it for the telemetry. It's not necessarily a good thing either - races were canned from DA2 in large part because telemetry "supported" the idea (in my own mind, it only "supported" the fact the origin story mechanic was not executed as well as it could have been). When people get statistics in their hands they get funny ideas. I say it's better we keep developers in the dark about hard numbers - you can't make a game better through statistical analysis alone (yet this is the danger I see as a result of this).
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I think people asking for low-combat backed the wrong game. BG/BG2 seldom let you skip conflict through persuasion. Of course, alternative problem solving is great, but complaining about there being too much combat... your game is called Numenera.
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Well, I think criticism is vital to improvement. But PAX or solely Alan are probably not the viable targets/forums for this.
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So, because you've "heard it all" before, they're not valid criticisms?
Let's not start something - but I think it's the case of Alan having taken the criticism and already decided what was valid and wasn't wasn't. In a state like that, what else can you do? Once you've made up your mind about something, hearing the same ol' from somebody else isn't going to sway you or stimulate any further development.
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Will there be mono-like encounters? Like, a room full of monsters that are immune/highly-resistant to fire? Or will those not be present at the game at all?
I agree that most encounters should be varied so as not to make certain playstyles gimped, but if there's a single instance or two in the game where players who rely on certain strategies/builds need to do something radically different in a single room to move past it... that could be interesting. Though, maybe it's not worth it?
My flimsy question is: How true are you sticking to that design philosophy? Will it be permitted to have encounters ever designed that way?
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Is there any lengthy publication I can read that expresses BioWare's design policies at length? Like, a game design book or something that (pretty much) encapsulates what everyone over there is on the "same page about"? I think it would help in making discussion and criticism less "charged". A lot of us are on the 'receiving end' so we probably are missing a lot of the thought processes that lead to critical decisions.
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Right, making the game world react to the player's race choice is hard but I should think with enough budget and effort it should be possible, especially if the game is built around it from the ground up - which it honestly should be. It's a good conflict that's probably easy for players to relate to. If you're being bullied by people just because of your race, you'll probably be angry and emotional - that's what BioWare should want anyway. It adds more context and depth to the whole, "twirling mustache" vs "halo on your head" choice stuff BioWare tends to do. Do you take out your oppression on the world? Or do you try to reform it?
Now, if you're going to build a game where you can be not-oppressed or oppressed, that does add a lot of complexity, but it still could be easily done with a few variables here and there and a few if statements and a little bit of design... of course, the real issue is cost inflation by added voicework, I'm sure. We can't have that.
(this is why any serious RPG gamer should denounce BioWare for following and reinforcing this stupid standard of 'everything must be voiced' - it's absolutely unecessary for everything in an RPG to be voice; it's just not worth it)
Also, I would really advocate for stronger race design. I've played more obscure games where you get to play as a cyborg, robot, zombie, treant, werewolf, vampire, abomination, moleperson, mermaid, et cetera - where the chocie of your race deeply effects how you play. For example, molepeople can't see above ground and need to use special abilities to navigate in the sunlight (but can see at night/in the dark caverns). Naturally, I'm talking about an old text-based RPG here, but I can see this kind of gameplay being translated well into 3-D - where you get a fancy weird echo-location mode, or something, to use, while it's light out, making navigating the darkness fun while making navigating in the light a challenge, maybe even making light a 'dreadful thing to avoid' - I really like concepts like these that feed into roleplaying, it's where the game and the game world convey a sense of story, tension and weight without words of heavyhandedness.
Naturally, anything like what I'm describing takes time to build, takes effort to develop, and is not trivial to make fun and balanced, nevermind integrated into somekind of overarching narrative, but I've seen people hobble together basic games using nothing but words and a shoddy programming ability, I'm sure BioWare could pull something off like this if they really tried to.
This is what's really missing from Skyrim too - all of the racial abilities are so toned down and "eh?" that I just end up playing Nord all the time. What a bore! I can only hope people trying to emulate Skyrim's success will study it enough to see these gaping flaws and endeavor to give more context to the world you expect the player to explore.
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I got that feeling too. I did like the dwarf origin stories, but I never finished the game as a dwarf, because I was never compelled to play as one. And I don't think you get any opportunities to act like a drunken sod, so... there's that.
By far, for most RPGs, people play human. It's safe, it's relatable. It's only once you get comfortable in a setting, I think, that you begin to experiment with roleplaying as the other races. Of course, that's just my take, there are probably exceptions, but I really think Dragon Age as a whole would be more interesting if you weren't given the option to be human. If BioWare does want to push some kind of 'egalitarian' agenda, they really would be better off doing this - I think it would be very thrilling to play an oppressed/hated race in a fantasy RPG. Being given the option to play a city elf in DA:O never gave me the impression that I was discriminated against - well, past the first area of the origin story. 'cause, you know, I was a Grey Warden the whole rest of the game, my race never even came into the picture 98% of the time.
But if DA3 forced you to play Qunari/Dwarf/Elf in areas of the world where they are huned/murdered/discriminated? That not only presents compelling choices for players to act out in the game world, but it definitely forces players to roleplay and react to the world around them.
I also blame the lack of play rate on dorf/elf due to... the sameness. Why do I want to play as a long-eared human, or a short-drunk human, when I could just be... human? Qunari are a good addition to the race roster for DA3, because they are at least very aesthetically different from "human" - they have a different skin color, are bulkier, and have horn things, plus they have that odd religion - they're still human, but at least they stand out more (at least to me).
I really think races should be more distinct, aesthetically, especially at character generation.
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Dwarves had a <5% playrate in DA:O, which prompted their removal in DA2. Gaider's posts on BW back me up on this. He and I attribute this to a lack of 'empathizability' (the dwarves are pretty tolkien-esque; tired and drab - they aren't presented in any interesting way at the beginning of DA:O either, so there isn't a compelling reason to pick them) and the fact the core, target audience is the console market (who largely aren't exposed to 'roleplaying' anyway).
They are probably seeing dwarves in the same way they see the major races of Mass Effect - there's a reason Liara is a blue skinned human and not something more alien - because it's easy to empathize (and be sexually attracted to) something that is plainly human. So, dwarves getting the height treatment is probably one of their strategies for justifying bringing back the races for player characters. You can bet elves and qunari will have other such 'improvements'.
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If they're needing to clarify the dialogue wheel responses, why not simply revert to having sentences at the bottom of the screen? Was this so broken and upsetting to people, and is having a circle at the bottom of the screen so important? Seems a little illogical to implement all of these extra measures for the sake of having a circle present.
This is the deep psychology of EA, BioWare, or somebody at work - basically, screenshots and gameplay videos cannot reach the masses of eyes that play video games, because boxes containing text in a game are boring. Because people associate such a thing with old, only-losers-play-that, or out-dated video games like Point-n'-Click adventures, more traditional games like Dungeons and Dragons or more typically, old RPGs like Final Fantasy or Baldur's Gate. Those games are boring and old and slow. If you have a shiny "dialogue-wheel" you can repackage the mechanic as something new and alien and associate it with the action-y thrill of a whack-a-mole Mass Effect game. A tiny little wheel doesn't look as enormously oppressive as a big black box covering a quarter of the screen. Even though such functionality allows for richer text and interaction, the average person who does still like the old mechanic of reading can get their sip of pleasure, while still being able to market and advertise and demonstrate the game to the average dude bro. It's all about marketing and if it's not a designer at BioWare doing this consciously, it's the bigwigs over at EA stipulating it. It's probably why sex is a big thing with this generation of RPGs - because the average dude bro consumer can relate with 'getting laid' and can motivate them to read words on a screen.
Let me iterate on this, because people always take it the wrong way. I'm not saying that this is right or fair, I'm not even saying "dude bros" are horrible people. I am attacking this concept that some people in marketing apparently have. Maybe it's a stigma of marketers I have, but I believe people who work in marketing see the world through a lense of stereotypes and statistics, instead of reality.
The public at large does have a stigma against people who play more "traditional" games like Chess or Dungeons and Dragons. This high school mentality at least exists in America. I saw it in high school, I see it in my university, there's no reason to think it's gone away or does go away easily. People who go to LARPs have something socially or mentally deficient in them, many of my friends have expressed opinions that turn-based games, or at least, the concept of a "turn" is something that's old and extends from the limits of computing hardware in the past, that it is strictly a bad idea to make a turn based game, that turn-based games are inherently un-fun and dull. All it takes to see this is to flip through the latest vapid television shows still on, like, I dunno, the Big Bang Theory. There exist multiple episodes where the jokes are, succinctly, "lol that nerd plays dungeons and dragons!" There is a strong public perception about what is "fun" that marketers are very qucik to latch on to. Since nobody believes in demos, you have to sell a game via its box art or some thirty-second clip of gameplay - or you have to sell the game based on it being a part of a historical franchise. You can't sell a game, let a lone a new game, that uses turn-based mechanics - not to the western masses anyway. Small indie games get away with this, but it's not enough to move ten or fifty thousand units.
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The red lyrium stuff does sound as suspiciously cornball and awful as DA2's "main" antagonist. I wish everything from that game would just be... you know, not used or mentioned ever ever again.
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isn't Morrigan a very intelligent woman and very powerful Mage that considers all options?
Not really?
What are you saying? All women are intelligent. Morrigan especially.
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BioWare's not gonna drop romances. Sex sells. They know it. I mean, look at Fire Emblem awakening. Not that Fire Emblem hasn't had a marriage system until now, but just the inclusion of a few 'waifus' is all you need to secure a lot of bux. Sawyer says romance shouldn't be "getting woman = win state", but that's what people like, they like that feeling of selecting a few obvious dialog statements and receiving "win". It's also easy for BioWare to deliver-
And you can't expect them to throw out all the dialog they recorded already? That **** is expensive. Considering the old release date for DA3, all the romance lines are already recorded at this point.
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"In DA2, you basically cannot use radial AOE attacks correctly"
Wrong. It's very easy to use them correctly unless your IQ is very low.
I've already explained this and if you want, you can watch my ****ty 2 hour video which has footage of what I'm talking about in it. I could not aim my AOE at the Arishok because of no camera zoom. If you're going to troll at least don't be an **** about it.
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You need the zoom out view to aim AOEs. In DA2, you basically cannot use radial AOE attacks correctly unless you're on a stairwell. Consoles don't have this problem because joysticks have "depth" unlike a mouse.
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The reason why they might not implement zoom-out is because it would be a PC-only feature. Why would it be a PC-only feature? Because render distance. Crappy consoles can't render things beyond a set field of view. Zooming out would introduce lots of potential QA work and optimization for the console releases.
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Josh Sawyer reveals some information about Project Eternity's attribute scores
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by anubite
I've done a lot of mental wrestling over what makes a good stat system.
I think the best ones are really really abstracted. I've been building a post apoctalypic game in a similar vein of Liberal Crime Squad (so, it's about ridiculous social reform in a collapsing society). There are six stats: Might, Youth, Obscenity, Presence, Ignorance, Academics (MYOPIA). Might and Academics are probably the cloest analogies to Strength and Intelligence, but not really. In my game, Might is a potentially physical and a mental/social kind of might - you could be physically mighty, or just an imposing, steadfast force (but you can't just tell by looking at your might score, your skills and other attributes determine this as a whole). It influences skills related to melee weapons, some social skills, carry weight, and damage reduction. Academics influences your ability to utilize explosives, craft items, learn from books and such, but it also influences certain social and combat skills (like the ability to use tech weapons like tasers).
The point of my system is that there is a lot of overlap. For instance, your ability to use and damage with explosives uses the Explosives skill, which is a number which comes from three sources:
RAW + Academics + Obscenity
If you have 10 academics, 0 obscenity, you have RAW + 5 total skill in explosives (You need 10 in both attributes to have a 10 base in explosives). Your RAW comes from your training in that skill. You improve RAW by spending experience points, performing specific actions, or learning from books.
(A skill like Science only uses the 'Academics' stat, so 10 academics = 10 science skill, meaning people who are academic are good at science, and non academic people need to invest a lot of experience in science to be nearly as good at it, most skills are hybrid though - they take 50% of two stats to determine their base score).
The basic idea though, is that someone who's obscene, or rather, a character who's rash, agile, reckless - he should be good at utilizing explosives. A character who's nerdy or academic too, might be good at explosives. A character who is both obscene and nerdy... he's exceptionally good at utilizing explosives.
You can also be good at explosives you spend a lot of expience improving your raw.
I think attributes in roleplaying games should be about representing your character concept in terms of statistics, since it's kind of difficult to abstract physical reality anyway, we should just make things really abstract, right? Of course, my system is hardly perfect, or maybe even good (I haven't tested it enough yet), but I do think PE is on the right track with this 'soul' system, since it's very abstract - but it's maybe a bit held back by the concept of a "soul" since our souls can be contrary to our true nature? Or at least, our souls can be contrary to our physical nature. A man who is very bulky and strong might have a very weak heart - that sort of dissonance doesn't necessarily make for a good statistics system (as it doesn't mesh too well with the roleplaying or combat aspect).