metiman

Bioware claimed that Dragon Age was going to be a spiritual successor to BG2. Not even NWN mind you. BG2. And look how that turned out. Backing or not backing the project is not the point. Telling people, the ones who actually liked the IE games, to leave the forum doesn't speak to this concern. "Demonstrably similar" is vague and misses the point. They didn't pitch a nextgen, as different from the wretched D&D as possible, and yet familiar to players of modern games. They pitched going back to those classic IE games that they used to make. If they aren't serious about their promise they should withdraw it. If what they promised is not what you want because you utterly despise everything about the game system that was used to create Every Single One of those classic IE games then perhaps you should be the one reconsidering whether you are backing the project. That fireside chat reassured me that, at heart, Sawyer is more of a Codexian than a NewBiowarian. It remains uncertain what that implies for the project though. Clearly the opposition to the IE game mechanics is very strong indeed as you demonstrate here. It remains to be seen how this popular opposition to the IE mechanics may or may not influence the direction of the game. I suppose they could change their pitch to: "What those of you who hated the IE games would have liked them to have been instead."

I didn't interpret it as a personal attack. I just don't think the sorts of posts you seem to enjoy making are helpful. Why not actually discuss the issues instead of just snickering at and belittling people?

I think J. E. has been a something awful poster for ages though. He posts there on a regular basis regardless. I'm not sure he needs to make an appearance on every classic game forum. I think it's enough for him to come here. It's not like we are not all aware this place exists and if we want to speak to the devs this is a more logical place to do so.

And then a man came upon a forum and he sayeth little meaningless phrases which he knoweth are clever and he doth display his cleverness for all to see...

Really? What is it about his statement that you find reassuring?

Jeez. I really do think he needs to pick a side.

Level scaling is not the point anyway. Sawyer has already said that it's not going to be in the game in any significant way. What more can he say? That's good enough for me. So it's a bit of a red herring. But we may be getting cooldowns-as-rest and other nextgen features which arguably simply are out of place in a tribute game to IWD and BG2 and PS:T, regardless of their merits. It is undeniable that those games did not have any of these nextgen mechanics being discussed. It is plausible to argue that it is dishonest of them to include these mechanics based on their promises right on the kickstarter page. I think they have the right to make any game they want, but they should be upfront about exactly what their vision is on the kickstarter page. Some people are investing lots of money into this. Thousands of dollars even. That's quite a different thing entirely from the many people who are just preordering a game. Such people are true investors and what they are investing in is Obsidian's game pitch on Kickstarter. Their investment is to see that sort of game get made, despite the tremendous unpopularity of it even on these forums. It's just unfair to such people not to stick with your promises. I'd go so far as to say that it is wrong. Unethical. You can try to redefine what an old-school IE-like cRPG is all you want, but they were what they were. Every time you change one of the mechanics of those games in the name of "progress" or "evolution" you are changing the fundamental nature of the game. At the very least there should have to be an argument as to why a particular change does not change an important dynamic of those IE games: something essential to why those of us who actually loved those games enjoyed them so much. The burden of proof should be on those who propose the changes to the IE formula, not on those who want to keep the old mechanics. I don't think Sawyer has made a particularly good case for his rest-as-cooldown dynamic. Yes, walking back to a campsite is not the most exciting thing, but trying to remove that minor tedium might destroy the very IE formula that they claim to want to emulate. It's often difficult to define what it is exactly that makes one game enjoyable and another with not so different mechanics not enjoyable. The only thing we know about the love that some people felt for games like BG2 is that the reasons for it are both subtle and complex. For instance why do some people (like me) find BG2 gameplay absolutely addictive and enjoyable for more than a decade of replays and yet never get more than a tiny fraction into BG1? Are the game dynamics between these two games really so different? No. The difference is subtle and yet it is enough to put some players off entirely. Compared to the minor differences between BG1 and BG2, or even between IWD1 and IWD2, Obsidian's proposed changes to the very essence of IE-ness are anything but insignificant. I admit that Josh's attitude and statements in his 'fireside chat' yesterday has turned me around about the game. I am now planning to be a backer again. But I am still concerned. A very large faction on this forum is against nearly everything that made those IE games what they were. About the only thing they really seem to have liked about them was the isometric perspective. The rest is just nostalgia. Not that they will admit this, perhaps not even to themselves. If I contributed $250 (a lot of money for me) to this project and it did turn into something like Dragon-Age-in-spirit even unintentionally would I be wrong to be angry about it? I don't think so. If Obsidian wants to significantly "improve" on the IE formula they should have been up front about it on the kickstarter page. If they are serious about it they have an ethical (although not legal) obligation to be clear about those changes on the kickstarter page. It's not enough to say that the game has not really been designed yet. They have already made promises upon which people are comitting large sums of money. There is still time to make those changes. Backers who are not happy with those changes still have time to withdraw their funding. The point is that, although Obsidian is free from the often arbitrary and illogical demands of a publisher, they are not free from the promises they have made to the true fans of their old IE games. Some of us loved everything about those games. Not just the stories, which aside from PS:T, were mostly nonexistent or just plain awful, but everything.

They also haven't actually pitched the game itself. They haven't really described the kind of game they want to make. They mention the games they've worked on, but not what their vision is for the game they want to make now. Are they trying to continue the Wizardry series? A sort of Wizardry 9? They don't say. Not trying to be a faux-moderator, but does this thread really belong here? It seems kind of wrong to post it here.

Why always Reddit? They can't arrange a Slashdot interview? Incidentally I don't think this project has been posted on Slashdot yet.

So indie Dragon Age confirmed then? Neither confirmed nor denied.

At some point the conflict between the Codexian /Old School faction and the Biowarian or new-systems-are-better factions is going to have to be acknowledged and commented on. There is a major rift in the supporters of this project. It will be difficult/impossible to please both groups. Controversial decisions will eventually have to be made which will displease a large number of people from one faction or another. There may even be some people who will feel ripped off if the development of the project turns strongly against what they were expecting and what was explicitly described in the kickstarter project description. The difference between 2nd Ed. and 3rd Ed. DnD is not all that controversial. Even I tolerate 3rd Edition after seeing how well ToEE did it and after enjoying NWN2: MotB game mechanics, albeit to a lesser degree. I'll always have a soft spot for 2nd Ed. though and don't necessarily agree that 3rd Ed. is better. A more controversial decision would be going with 4th Ed. Lots of people feel it uses MMOG mechanics. The controversial decisions are going to have to be made eventually regarding truly modern game mechanics from Dragon Age, MMORPGs like WoW, Witcher, Oblvion/Skyrim, console rpgs and jrpgs. These sorts of mechanics don't seem to jibe with the description on the kickstarter page. After all, if all of the nextgen game mechanics are adopted what is left of games like IWD or BG2 in PE? Just the isometric perspective? I think one of the first things Obsidian should decide on are what core aspects of gameplay from the original IE games do they want to keep and then announce what those are, if any. If it's just the isometric perspective there will definitely be some dissapointed backers in the OldSchool faction. Myself included. If PE is too similar to the games mentioned in the kickstarter obviously the Biowarian/NewSchool factions are going to be enraged and disappointed.

I'm not going to agree or disagree with the rest of your post, but I'd like to point out something unrelated to my opinions quickly, a fact if you will: They outright said that the backers were their boss this time around. “I’d much rather have the players be my boss and hear their thoughts for what would be fun than people who might be more distant from the process and the genre and frankly, any long-term attachment to the title.” - Chris Avellone And not just that one way quoted above, they've said it multiple times. Like I said, I'm not going to bring my opinion into this. It's just a fact that they set up that 'you are our boss' mentality. They did. Obsidian did. Not some self entitled fans on the forum. Obsidian. If I were to put in one little bit of my opinion on the subject it would be, "I think that's awful brave of Obsidian." I guess we'll see how that pans out. Interesting, but who are these "players" Chris is talking about? That's the problem. If they are really serious about that sort of thing I think they should set up a whole group of various official polls that are linked from the kickstarter page and maybe which only backers can vote in. That's really the best they can do in terms of getting a feel for their players' opinions on various issues. Unofficial forum polls are not useless, but it has been pointed out that only an infinitesimal percentage of backers actually vote in them. Obviously you can't force backers to make their opinions heard, but you can at least encourage as many as possible to do so. Maybe there should be a forum poll on whether Obsidian should be more proactive with their official polls. There is that one on the main page of this site, but even that only has a couple of thousand or so votes out of over 50,000 backers. Admittedly quite a few people do not seem to want what Obsidian has actually promised on their kickstarter page, but I suppose they can always change the description before the kickstarter ends if it turns out that the majority of backers want DA:O combat and DA2 romance or whatever.

Ugh. This is just the sort of "streamlining" that I hate. If you find buffs too much of a PITA to use then, I don't know, how about not using them? I never consistently have every possible buff cast. In fact I rarely buff at all before battle and then only use the ones most critical for that particular fight and use them sparingly. In BG2 with Sword Coast Strategems most mages always cast all long term protection spells that they have before battle. I found this a bit cheesy because I never do that. At most I'll have stoneskin cast on my mages. I asked the mod author about why there was no option to turn that off and he said something like, "Why would you want mages to act foollishly.". While that is a good point, the fact remains that not everyone is constantly constraint optimizing in every way. And as far as just making all long acting buffs into some kind of extended ability, I don't see the point and I think making them that easy would affect the balance of that class. Other aspects of the class might have to be nerfed or the XP progression might have to be altered to make the class level up more slowly to make up for it.

It's always nice when there are specific examples. I liked the way things were done in ToEE. In fact I liked pretty much everything about ToEE except its length. Would this be the [x] wildly different in their abilities choice?

What's the difference between this and being able to rest anywhere with the limitation of min 8h between rests and with the possibility to be interrupted? There is absolutely none, both systems achieve the same thing yours just adds a little more in game time which is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant if you care about narrative. God forbid someone playing a game with a PS:T/MotB-ish story should care about narrative. But yes the results are the same. I say make easy resting an option. Players who like newer style combat can enable fast-resting. Players who like BG2 combat can leave it disabled.

Thank goodness Sawyer doesn't seem to share your taste in combat systems, Virgil. So BG2 combat = boring and DA:O combat = tactical and difficult. Interesting.

If the only problem with BG2 combat was resting too often, then why not just only allow resting every 16 hours and make sure that the compelling story has time limits? Make sure that the world actualy changes with time and that time is another resource that needs to be managed (by not wasting it). If people are trying to make fights easier by returning to camp every time their mage runs out of spells then let there be a narrative penalty for that. Why fix a system that is not otherwise broken? In the forum polls BG2 consistently gets the highest marks for its combat (well except maybe compared to turn based ToeEE) and even overall gameplay. PS:T does nearly as well, but I'd venture a guess that it isn't due to the combat system. I'm trying to imagine showing up at a Dragon Age Reborn kickstarter and voting for it as my favorite cRPG of all time and then saying that I hated pretty much everything about the combat and could I please have Arx Fatalis or ToEE style combat instead. If you didn't like BG2 or IWD or IWD2 or PS:T combat then what are you doing here? Not saying you don't have a right to be here. I just don't understand why you are interested in a kickstarter that wants to create a BG2/IWD/PS:T hybrid if you disliked the combat in every single one of those games and strongly prefer some more modern system. Now maybe some of you just despised the magic system in those games and liked the standard RTwP melee combat. Or maybe some of you are consistent in hating the combat in all of those games and PnP DnD in general and are only here because you are hoping for a PS:T or MotB level story. Nevertheless it all seems a bit cheeky to me. But it seems clear that Obsidian seems intent on at least trying to accomodate you. Somehow I don't think the equivalent would happen if Codexians were to show up at a Bioware or Bethesda kickstarter suggesting ToEE combat mechanics. In fact we'd probably just have our IP address insta-banned and be shouted down as a troll by all the fanboys almost immediately. I'm wondering which part of that wasn't clear. Admittedly IWD combat was used as a more specfic example and not BG2, but both systems would be equally vulnerable to these criticisms over rest spamming and the unrealism of spell memorization and all the rest. The various views can be divided into two factions. One likes the old combat systems and would kill for a BG3 or a IWD3 or a PS:T-2 that is identical in every way except for the story being a sequel, but may or may not be thinking (as I am) don't try to fix what isn't broken and first do no harm. The other faction may have utterly hated those combat and magic systems and strongly prefers a newer, esoteric, or some completely novel combat mechanic. I am sympathetic with some of these new (to me) systems like fatigue and the only system I really have a major problem with is cooldowns (of any sort), but I don't consider the old systems broken in any way. Not even slightly. I only left the dungeon to rest when my characters were on the edge of death and likely bleeding out. It was a kind of retreat. To me "rest spamming" wasn't any sort of problem I needed to solve. To me there was no conceptual problem with a once per day spell memorization system. I liked the fact that mages were limited in the number of spells they cast per day and that eventually they would be reduced to slings or crossbow bolts. I liked the fact that you weren't omniscient enough to predict what spells you always needed and that that sometimes resulted in a less than ideal battle strategy or even a party death and subsequent reload. I liked the fact that one price of exploring with a mage, of all that power, was that you might use up more game time than you might otherwise have with a melee only party. I was always disappointed when there was no real meaning to the passage of time that penalized you for this, but that wasn't such a big deal either. I think a main story that takes into account the passage of time would be nice and would help balance out the power of spell casters vs melee characters to an extent, but it isn't a deal breaker for me if that isn't in. Of course, I don't think forcing all classes to rest every 16 hours or suffer a gradual decline in abilities is at all unreasonable or undesirable. Perhaps some races could get by with less sleep, but certainly humans should require at least 6 hours of sleep per night to even have the slightest chance of fighting with their maximum ability. And enforcing a 16 hour waking time between sleep would seem to solve this whole non-problem all by itself. Obviously sleeping 8 hours ever hour is not particularly logical or realistic, and I never played that way in the first place. The only justification for it might be soloing as a mage, in which case it might be nice to turn off that requirement or allow some kind of soporific drug/herb to allow you to sleep so much. If not being able to memorize 100 complex spells at short notice is unrealistic then what about continuing to walk around with heavy packs and fight multiple life threatening battles that wound much of the party and then just continue on forever without sleep? I just don't get all this fuss over walking to a safe place to rest? Is it really that tedious to do? So tedious that it is worth risking the fun of a hugely enjoyable and proven combat system? To me the risk is not worth the possible reward, if any. Why not respect the proven systems of the past and try to add options for players who didn't like them instead of simply removing the old system and possiblly destroying the entire experience for the players who loved BG2/IWD/PS:T combat just as it was? How? 1. (easy) Introduce an insta-camping function/button/option that has some canned animation of leaving a dungeon and making camp and then returning, possibly with various sub-settings like the option to start you back at the beginning of the level or the beginning of the entire dungeon or which makes you wait for some set amount of time as well. After all, this is Josh's argument in favor of cooldowns. Just automate the process and be done with it. Is this the equivalent of a resting cooldown? Yeah, but it's optional. I don't think a lot of us who loved the old combat mechanics have a huge amount of difficulty restraining ourselves from engaging in game mechanics that we don't like. Just because a resting bypass button or checkbox exists does not mean we have to use it. 2. (more involved) Automatically (or manually) record a sort of macro of movement events between the last place of rest or last viable place of rest (presumably outside of the dungeon if you are in one). Then just play it back in reverse, rest, and play it forward again. This mostly just elminates the canned nature of the animation in solution (1) while still mitigating a lot of the tedium complaints about resting, especially if there is the option to speed things forward by 10x or 100x or whatever. 3. (considerably more involved but with additional benefits including greater replay value) Take a page from BG2's book and implement more than one sort of arcane caster class in the game. You could have a Vancian mage, a BG2 style sorcerer, a fatigue based caster, a mana+reagent based caster, a ritual+reagent based caster, a prayer based caster, and even a cooldown based caster / magic spammer or any subset of these that includes the old style mechanic as well. Each casting class could be more or less balanced with each other through playtesting. It is a lot more work admittedly, but it would also allow for a great deal of replay value playing all these different sorts of casters. It would also allow the sort of innovation that Josh seems to be interested in. You won't risk ruining an entire game just by having a single class that many people dislike. If you don't like a class you don't have to play it. One disadvantage may be fitting it all in with the game narrative/setting. Now it might be argued that the encounter system as a whole cannot be balanced properly for at least the first two options. That if the encounters are mainly designed for the players who play the old way that things will be too easy for the player who can insta-regain all of their spells at will like BG2 Wish spell cheese or one of the "infinite spells" exploits. I would argue that the difficulty system can mitigate this imbalance. Different players prefer different level of combat difficulty in any case. Having choices to increase or decrease encounter difficulty is an important game mechanic and one of the few that can be very much improved compared to the old IE games with their "every enemy does 50% more damage" crudeness. Actually having this option could in itself be considered part of the difficulty system. Although I do believe in combat fairness and that if you can insta-regain all of your spells enemy mages should be able to do the same. So it could just result in casters killing off non-casters very quickly without otherwise altering the game difficulty significantly.

Personally I would be absolutely thrilled with a game that had the exact same combat as either BG2, IWD, or even PS:T combined with a compelling story. I dont' need some kind of nextgen improvement for people who find that gameplay too tedious. Overall I defintely did not and do not find it tedious. To me nothing has changed for the better in terms of game design. Maybe in terms of graphics but the infinity engine was adequate for me in terms of graphics. To this day I am still replaying BG2 regularly. Other than ToEE I have never found a game with a better combat system. Obviously not everyone is going to agree of course and there are clearly sort of two factions at least here in the forums. I'm fairly confident that the faction that hates most modern games and hates Bioware's recent games (need I say more) mostly prefers the older style combat despite it not being 100% perfect for everyone. Is there any system that is? Certainly by popularity any recent game by Bioware or Bethesda would make any of these mechanics pale in terms of popularity. And MMORPGs mechanics even more so. That is if this is a sort of popularity contest, which perhaps it is at least to some extent. But if that is the case then there really is no answer and probably never will be.

Do we? You may like it, but for me, the rest system was definitely one of the weaker parts of the IE games. The problem is I that I cannot think of anything better -- but if Obsidian can, then they should by all means try it. The one thing I believe there is more or less a consensus on in this thread is that there should not be cooldowns in the sense of not being to cast the same spell twice in a row without waiting a long time (as in Dragon Age: Origins). "Make it an option" is a solution to everything controversial, but it doubles the work the developer must do. In this case, an option would mean two different systems each of which must work throughout the game. I highly doubt they have that kind of resources to spare. But what if they get it wrong. So wrong that even you prefer the old system? Monkeying with this stuff is just...it's highly risky unless you understand what makes it enjoyable for most of us really really well. This sort of 'improvement' has been attempted so many times and yet it has never succeeded. I'd like to understand why not. I was mentioning in another thread how I found the custom spell system in Daggerfall to make spells somehow less interesting to me. Not more. It seemed to sort of cheapen the sense of magic to just isolate the different effects like that. How could the Bethesda devs have predicted that sort of reaction? Surely custom spell effects should be more interesting, no?

I guess you'd have to reduce the number of spells so that it is around the same amount you would normally have. As I have said before I use my mage's spells as I need them, but I don't immediately go running back to rest when he has no spells left. I nearly always wait until the health is fairly low on at least half my party before doing that. In that sense encounter based seems a bit overpowered.

I think he probably is sincere actually. You have to remember that you are the lead developer on this project. We would never normally expect to be talking to you at all. It should go without saying that we are honored and all that. And yes I'm being sincere.

So is there a consensus as to his basic question? Might there be any value to streamlining the traditional leave-dungeon-to-rest-mechanic? I'm thinking that it may be too risky to find out. We know that the old system is highly enjoyable for the target audience. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. Can it be improved? Maybe, but how to be sure? Beta testing? Maybe, but it may not be comprehensive enough. If it's that important to consider then why not make the choice an optional one? Is that not an easy solution?

Locking out access to an entire level of spells once you have exhausted the castings you have available to you at a given level (as a 3E sorcerer would) means that you have to use spells from your other spell levels. This creates a tactical challenge during combat, especially for spells at levels where you do not have many castings available (i.e. typically your highest). Allowing them to regenerate literally instantly means that there is not a tactical consideration; you should just use the most powerful spell for the situation over and over again for the duration of combat. The feeling of challenge is a balance between enjoyment and frustration. It is not the same for every player, but it is almost always at some midpoint between those two emotions. My goal is to use a variety of mechanics to find balance points that appeal to this specific audience, varied as it is. I think that instant health regeneration errs to much on the side of ease for this audience. Not really Josh. You are probably too busy to get this question correctly. Sorry to intrude on your busy schedule like this. But your reply has little do with what I said. I haven't yet said a single word about the difficulty or tactics WITHIN the combat. All I am asking is why this artificial Cooldown time? Why not instantaneous regeneration POST combat? I assume this was a form of logical reductio ad absurdum and not what you would actually like to see in the game?

I must have missed your post. A large number of the people in this thread are talking about a type of spell cooldown I've never suggested for PE (cast a Fireball, unable to cast Fireball again for 30 seconds). You also never ruled it out and made a point of not doing so. I don't think it is unfair for some of us to assume that was for a good reason. I admit that that is precisely the mechanism that concerned me. A reassurance that that was not what you had in mind would have entirely renewed my enthusiasm for the game. As for the cooldown-as-rest mechanism it is a very interesting conundrum. I am tempted to believe that there is a certain amount of pain that must be endured as the price of the enjoyment aspect, but I would really have to actually try a specific example of such a system to be sure. If there isn't one available that is considered appropriate I would have to wonder why. Surely it's not for a lack of trying to streamline cRPG systems. That seems like all the mega-developers ever do.

Fair enough.