Game_Exile

It was probably unfair (to Mark Morgan) to praise Baldur's Gate's music so much, because there were a few really nice tracks from Torment as well. Nonetheless, superior style is evident in Hoenig's work, even if the execution isn't on the level of, say, good film composers. And if Mark Morgan didn't make the three P:E tracks in this thread, then my opinion of his music automatically rises by approximately three compositions. But who IS making the music for this game? Is this the guy? They couldn't find anyone with more experience than Justin Bell? Mark Morgan would be a better choice. Is it too late to hire him?

Michael Hoenig's work was fantastic! It was one of the best things in BG2, and it really helped to carry the game's godawful story. Hoenig made hands down some of the best video game music of all time. On the other hand, after re-listening to a lot of the music from the CRPG composers, I'm pessimistic about Mark Morgan making the music to P:E. Almost everything I've heard from him is mostly ambience and fluff, including the newer P:E stuff. My general criticisms of Mark Morgans work: weak melodies, melodic fragments that go nowhere, too many missing notes, meaningless or oversimplistic texture, and no sense of scale. It's like he's composing for people stricken with ADD. Nothing holds together. Morgan's best work that I've heard is the title theme to Planescape: Torment and maybe one other theme from that game. I guess his muzak will work OK for background noise. I'm just really disappointed after listening to some of Hoenig's work again.

Wanderon, check out my post here, or on p.3 of this thread. It is basically a matter of matching the strategic elements of the game to their representation in the game's setting/story. Of course the strategic elements and the game's story are practically inseparable (or at the very least should be), but it is still helpful to reflect on the problem by looking at the matter from these different angles. Respawns are fine as long as they are not too random and they have reasons to be there in the setting/story. Practically everything in the game is going to be "spawned", it's just a matter of making them interesting and sensible. And thinking in terms of "quests" just won't cut it if you want to make major advancements in the genre with this game. You should center the game around it's long range strategic elements and the player's long term goals, not around story bits and text based mini-puzzles in scattered scenarios. You can, of course, also focus down some on the mini puzzles and story bits, and make those parts extra interesting. But if you want an epic story, you should concentrate on the the long term and central elements of your game.

Why aren't you a fan of timed stuff? Is it because it stresses you out, like the guy who posted right above you?

Double Post. Sorry bout that.

I hate what Brennecke's post says, because it is pretty much telling me that the devs just plan to go with tacked-on XP , and all the other same old ****, for the long term logistical part of their game. And the story will end up suffering for this as well. I mean, look at this ****. Is this game going to have any challenge whatsoever?!? Lol at "the player needs to be able to define his own ways of resolving problems in the story." If everything the player does outside of combat is just going to be customization, meaning inconsequential short range choices, then the only problem is guessing which option is going to yield the best XP or gear reward. Read my excellent (slightly edited) post from the insightful "Should P:E have time limits?" thread: The problem with Fallout 1 isn't that it has the overarching time limit. The problem is that the entire long term logistics part of the game and most other CRPGs is dumbed down to ****, so that everything is either too easy, meaning the player's choices don't matter in the long run, or too unpredictable and random, so that the choices amount to guessing what the game's content is. Seriously, "choice" in these games doesn't even reach the Facebook Farm level of meaningful complexity. It's not difficult to understand why Star Control 2 was being promoted by the thread starter. It is a good logistics game (leaving aside the fact that most players on their first playthrough won't even suspect there is a hard time limit until it is too late to prepare for it), and it has all its relatively simple elements, including story/setting, beautifully integrated. Obviously, with a CRPG that has a much more complex setting, you will probably need to implement an "overarching" timer and its effects in much more complex ways than in SC2 if you want it to work with the story. Still, something as simple as spawning increasingly difficult monsters/battles at certain time intervals would make the logistics part of the game much more interesting by giving you more reason to get all the great XP/gear/allies/strongholds, while on the other hand making you weigh this against the need to do things like travel more efficiently, and avoid resting needlessly. Here is the other way of looking at the "problem" with the timer in FO1: it suddenly doesn't make sense to do all the stuff in the game that is unrelated to getting that water chip before time runs out, and you end up having a lot of superfluous setting or "content". This is what people are actually complaining about when they say they want to play "at their own pace" (Seriously, what the f*** else is "at the player's pace" supposed to mean? That you want a really easy game?). It amounts to a "story" complaint, and every other poster in this thread has to some degree or other suggested that the "solution" is to more sensibly integrate the time limits with the story/setting. For a so-called "overarching" timer like the one in FO1, this means you simply make the main quest "goals" much broader so that they encompass many more quests and actions, i.e. much more of the setting/story, thereby making it appropriate for the overarching time limits and their effects to appear in the story no matter what the player chooses to do. And obviously you design and balance it so that it doesn't suck. Look at the two faces of the "overarching" time limit problem, i.e. 1) having (better) logistics integrated with your story vs. 2) keeping (bad tacked-on) logistics from hurting the story, and you get an argument for moving more of the game's long range choices from the character sheet into the "world", meaning into things like gear/strongholds/faction relations/allies and overarching timers(!)/money/stamina(?). It gives you opportunities to better integrate your central logistical elements to parts of the story and setting outside of tactical combat WHILE better showing the probabilities for long term decisions that the player makes, all within the context of "exploration". Designing the logistics more broadly into the setting will, anyway, at least make the game more interesting than just tacking on XP as a quest reward. And as far as short term timers or time limits go, there is no reason not to have a timer in every single instance where it is appropriate to have a timer. Besides flat quest deadlines, you should have things like enemies reinforcing their ranks or retreating, things that appear in night day cycles, etc. Much of this has been done before, anyway. You really can't please everybody. At some point the devs have to decide whether they want to make a game about gettting stoned and getting lost, or make a game about adventuring and overcoming challenges. You can't pretend to do both at anything but the most superficial level. What I'm basically saying is that the player should have to do more than haphazardly collect XP, hit a few main quest triggers, and win a final battle in order to reach his actual goal (winning the game). What the player actually does, i.e. the strategic part of the game, is more interesting when it is more complex and challenging. As a result, all the meaning attached to what the player is doing, i.e. the story, becomes more meaningful when the game is more complex and challenging. So the story will be crap unless 1) it reflects what the player is actually doing, and 2) what the player is actually doing is interesting. For ****'s sake.

The problem with FO1 isn't that there it has the overarching time limit. The problem is that the entire long term logistics part of the game and most other CRPGs is dumbed down to ****, so that everything is either too easy, meaning the player's choices don't matter in the long run, or too unpredictable and random, so that the choices amount to guessing what the game's content is. Seriously, it doesn't even reach the Facebook Farm level of meaningful complexity. It's not difficult to understand why Star Control 2 was being promoted by the thread starter. It is a good logistics game (leaving aside the fact that most players on their first playthrough won't even suspect there is a hard time limit until it is too late to prepare for it), and it has all its relatively simple elements, including story/setting, beautifully integrated. Obviously, with a CRPG that has a much more complex setting, you will probably need to implement an "overarching" timer and its effects in much more complex ways than in SC2 if you want it to work with the story. Still, something as simple as spawning increasingly difficult monsters/battles at certain time intervals would make the logistics part of the game much more interesting by giving you more reason to get all the great XP/gear/allies/strongholds while on the other hand making you weigh this against the need to do things like travel more efficiently, and avoid resting needlessly. The other way of looking at the "problem" with the timer in FO1 is that it suddenly doesn't make sense to do all the stuff in the game that is unrelated to getting that water chip before time runs out, and you end up having a lot of superfluous setting or "content". This is what people are actually complaining about when they say they want to play "at their own pace" (Seriously, what the f*** else is "at the player's pace" supposed to mean? That you want a really easy game?). It amounts to a "story" complaint, and every other poster in this thread has to some degree or other suggested that the "solution" is to more sensibly integrate the time limits with the story/setting. For a so-called "overarching" timer like the one in FO1, this means you simply make the main quest "goals" much broader so that they encompass many more quests and actions, i.e. much more of the setting/story, thereby making it appropriate for the overarching time limits and their effects to appear in the story no matter what the player chooses to do. And obviously you design and balance it so that it doesn't suck. Look at the two faces of the "overarching" time limit problem, i.e. 1) having (better) logistics integrated with your story vs. 2) keeping (bad tacked-on) logistics from hurting the story, and you get an argument for moving more of the game's long term choices from the character sheet into the "world", meaning into things like gear/strongholds/faction relations/allies and timers(!)/money/stamina(?). It gives you opportunities to better integrate your central logistical elements to parts of the story and setting outside of tactical combat WHILE better showing the probabilities for long term decisions that the player makes, all within the context of "exploration". Designing the logistics more broadly into the setting will, anyway, at least make the game more interesting than just tacking on XP as a quest reward. And as far as short term timers or time limits go, there is no reason not to have a timer in every single instance where it is appropriate to have a timer. Besides flat quest deadlines, you should have things like enemies reinforcing their ranks or retreating, things that appear in night day cycles, etc. Much of this has been done before, anyway. You really can't please everybody. At some point the devs have to decide whether they want to make a game about gettting stoned and getting lost, or make a game about adventuring and overcoming challenges. You can't pretend to do both at anything but the most superficial level.

Justin Sweet's illustrations have very good style, but if you were going to hire the guy, why would you want him to just make portraits? The guy could probably contribute a lot more with background art and character models.

Right. Quite apart from being just a hassle or meaningless obligation, if staying fed can actually work out to be challenging for the duration of the game, then it could be an excellent addition to the game's mechanics. And by challenging I dont necessarily mean difficult, or central; it just means that food will figure into the player's longer and shorter range calculations, which would make something like a survival scenario more interesting and appropriate. Of course, if a food mechanic ends up hurting the game's aesthetics, overall, then it is probably best to leave it out. Mixing something as unsexy as eating into spectacular high fantasy stuff can be an odd fit, unless your setting is appropriately brutal.

If you want to avoid constantly pausing to reissue commands, one thing you can do is add command queue mechanics like they have in RTS games. That way you can queue up a string of commands for your characters in 1 pause and adjust later if you need to. As for AI scripting, it could be interesting to script unique tendencies for certain NPCs' AI. This would be another way to enhance an NPC's characterization. If the dynamics between managing stamina/pausing and issuing commands are designed well, I think customization for party AI would be superfluous. And even if you do have some AI "customization", you can still add to characterization by implementing things like party NPCs refusing to act a certain way during battle, or getting bonuses for acting in ways they like. All this can be integrated with the story. I like it. The more unique features you have, the better.

So what you are saying is that we are in total agreement. Though I am a bit skeptical about these fantasy novels you mention. By your own admission, you have yet to see a "believable" illustration of the type of self contradictory fictional society you are talking about. I don't know -- that would be up to the writers in practice, or the deity in-universe. Presumably, the deity is in charge of defining the words "good" and "evil", and can therefore define "evil" to be whatever behavior(s) he/she/it feels produces the desired results, and ensure that definition doesn't change over time. You are talking about "define" in the superficial sense. If a people come to feel that what must be named "evil" is actually good, the meaning of "evil" will change to "good", especially over generations if it persists. The word attached to "good" frankly doesn't matter. Philosophy covers (at a very, very superficial level) some of the more important philosophical systems. And yes, most of them (not all) do contain some element of "good inevitably triumphs over evil". Note that this isn't at the individual level (e.g. one person), but at the "big picture" level -- over the course of hundreds of years, societies that are based on "good" concepts will triumph over societies that are built on "evil" concepts, with "good" and "evil" being defined by the specific philosophical system. The concept of "the meek will inherit the earth" is hardly unique to Christianity. Once again, you end up agreeing with me 100%: "Note that this isn't at the individual level (e.g. one person), but at the "big picture" level -- over the course of hundreds of years, societies that are based on "good" concepts will triumph over societies that are built on "evil" concepts, with "good" and "evil" being defined by the specific philosophical system." You realize what is "good" ends up being good because it, one way or another, triumphs over "evil"? This is a pretty common, very modern, insight about history. And you still haven't told me what a "philosophical system" is. If the "systems" are so complex that philosophy only covers them very very superficially, how in the hell are you drawing all these facile conclusions about them? "Philosophical system" sounds, to me, like a very very superficial misnomer. Lastly where else besides chritianity/judaism does it say "the meek will inherit the earth"?

Unless you are the fanatical religious type, modern morality has no bearing on whether or not you can find "believable" a fictional morality for a fictional society. That's why I didn't mention modern morality in my reply to your post. Because I was talking about the coherence of a fantasy world. Now, leaving "modern" morality aside, let me ask you one question. How many generations are people in your fictional society supposed to either a)keep tolerating the "evil" demands of the evil god, or b) keep identifying the "evil" as really evil? ONE way to do this would take an immense amount of "building", not because such a society is alien, but because you would have to clearly and convincingly show something that is extremely convoluted in its sense. The OTHER way is to make a game where it is simply easy to ignore the lack of sense in this part of the game's setting, in which case, dealing with moral questions in this game will probably be one of its least interesting parts (think of a cartoon Hell). What are "philosophical systems"? I've never before seen one of these "systems". And it is ridiculously stupid to think that "good people" will always come out ahead of "evil people". Which philosophy even comes close to saying THAT? I do not think benevolence is a structural necessity. I do not think our "north" societes put benevolence as a central value, something used by them to stand. You know very well selfish is a norm and is praised. Benevolence is praised too, but as something "exceptional". The heroic fire-fighter, the good sister. If "the good" is to get rich, to have a "successful life", a car, children, good education, good health, being patriotic, etc., it is not the "good" of our adventure novels and games. I'm glad to see that we agree (if I'm reading your post correctly). The way you write is very cute, and I bet you are, too!

Are all of you people forgetting that they are adding a STAMINA mechanic to combat??? This is awesome in a RTWP system because it puts the primary focus of your calculations on how to spend a visible(!) stamina meter instead of pausing constantly to make perfect timings on all your actions. The important thing with calculations is that they deal with things that are visible and obvious to the person who is calculating. The point of making something "turn based" is not really to "freeze" time and give people time to deliberate (because any game that allows you to pause will do that), but to split time up into neat easy to define sections that you can make calculations with. And since you can now make calculations around a stamina bar, you should add designed limits on the frequency with which the game allows you to pause. Combat should at least look more action packed, so instead of having unlimited (and frequent) pauses you should be able queue up multiple commands like you can in an RTS game. You can also make pausing itself cost stamina meter so that you must select a character when you pause and only be able to issue commands to that character during the pause. And if you want to coordinate your party's actions better, you can do something like give certain party characters a leadership stat so that when you pause with their stamina, they (you) can issue commands to other party members as well. There are lots of possibilities for more action AND more interesting and complex calculations, now that there is a stamina bar. Fewer pauses and more action is what I want! If you're trying to show a cohesive world that has lots of detail, lots of activity, and smooth animations that play out in real time during exploration, then the combat parts NEED to play out in real time or they will not even look like combat (think about the horrific turn cycles in the Fallout games). You cannot make what is supposed to be the most action packed parts of the game the parts where by far the least activity is happening. It would break the game's immersion.

I was going to try and comment on what you were saying, but that last bit you've lost me. Wasteland is one of my favorite games ever, if not my favorite game period. More graphics and better sound don't make a game for me... just like expensive special effects don't make a movie better for me, just like color and glossy paper don't make a comic book better for me. Sorry, we are just going to disagree on this point. The technology behind Wasteland could be improved, but the game design is stellar. Sorry, we are not "just going to disagree" about anything. I never said that better graphics and better sound automatically make a game better. Nor did I say that Wasteland had bad design. Did you not read what I typed here? Wrong, I understand what Scot McCloud's "gutter" is better than you do. And I managed to figure it out without reading that book, or anything else related to Scot McCloud. ALL it means is that certain details in your setting can be suggestive of much more than what you show explicitly in your foreground action. It doesn't mean you should make your audience wholesale imagine things that you didn't write, draw, film, design, etc. The fact that McCloud can spin this very mundane observation about storytelling and style into some overly elaborate BS about "gutters" only shows me that McCloud is a trashy thinker and that the only thing I should do with a copy of his book is throw it into a gutter (or use whatever other convenient method of waste disposal is at hand), not read it.

I want the Stronghold to be necessary (meaning non-optional) because I want it to be integrated with the rest of the game instead being an isolated mini-game. And in order for the stronghold to make good sense, being a de facto lord of a stronghold must dramatically affect the "balance" of the game (compared to what the game would hypothetically be like if you did not become lord of a stronghold).

Why would you want a game with a story/setting that makes no damn sense? A society where "being good" is punished? That's a ****ing paradox, buddy. Every single society, especially larger and long-lived societies, necessarily develop out of their conception of what is good. And what is good is always good for a reason, and what is bad is always bad for a reason. If for some reason, what once was good suddenly(!) becomes bad, the society dies, or it transforms into something else. This is why evil overlords are such a popular device in fantasy stories (because, in the long term, evil overlords must inevitably fail). Where you cannot make values, you cannot have a society. As for the design of this game, plain and simply, the sacrifices and benefits of good or bad behavior need to fit the story/setting (or the reverse if you want to design this game the stupid way, i.e. mainly design the story and setting to fit some shallow and derivative ready made quest scenarios, which will pretty much guarantee that the game's story and setting be crap). That's it right there. End of story. Here, here! On a side note, factions are a really good idea. Since story is all about the balance of power and it's effects, factions (especially if well integrated into the "main" storyline) can make things much more complicated and interesting than simply hero vs villain.

***Edit***--- Merin ends up saying some things that are completely different in a later post on this page, but the my responses to the quoted post on p.5 are still good for illustrating my opinions, so I'm leaving it as is. I'd like to add one important comment about "reactivity", though. That is, "reactivity", or the collection of effects (however small or elaborate) that are scripted for certain player actions, when done well, helps to give the illusion of a cohesive "world", i.e. they make the game more immersive. But if the effects aren't "believable", they actually make the game less immersive. That's why it is a bad idea to overdo it with things like cut scenes and dialogue/text. You have to take into account all the elements of your game and how they will work as a whole. What you are saying, unfortunately, is that you have the habit of using your imagination to make up for the shortcomings in a game's story/presentation/setting/etc. You like to imagine that you are playing a better game than you really are. I mean, wouldn't you rather be playing with action figures instead? If you get some nice customizable action figures and mini stage props, along with some stirring background music, wouldn't the resulting experience suit you better than the videogames you have played? I hate how this idea has always been worded: "what is best left to the imagination". What it actually means is "best left to SPECULATION". As in speculating about a mystery. It doesn't mean seeing an image or whatever and fantasizing like a delusional that all kinds of stuff that could appear somewhere, actually does appear there, when, in fact, it does not appear there. That article is BS. When you have great high fidelity visuals, great music, and, more elaborate scripting, some points you put in worthless character stats at the beginning of the game mean nothing. These things were significant in Wasteland becuase there was very little in the way of visuals, dialogue, story content in that game. OK Avellone, Wasteland was so barebones compared to more modern games, that something as pathetically meager as points in useless character stats actually mattered significantly to Wasteland's style. So what? When you have more and better detail in parts of your CRPGs (visual or otherwise), 1)much less can be left to the imagination, and 2) the demands for matching detail everywhere else (including more elaborate scripting) become exponentially greater. The stuff Avellone was talking about really only applies to ridiculously primitive CRPGs, Wasteland being a shining example of games that are too far outdated by now. If you want to tell a good story, then you simply have to design your quest system elegantly so that everything the player does, including "side quests", are meaningfully connected to the "central" story, the game's story, i.e. it is a part of the story and in certain parts more intimately or more tenuously connected with whatever central themes/concepts the story revolves around. But either way, everything has to be part of a whole. Witness this quote from the kickstarter page: Yes, you need to "tie it all together", meaning you have to design it. ------ Now an aside, WTF is this about "mature thematic exploration"? Torment had grandiose concepts, good scripting, and cohesive setting and style, not "mature thematic exploration". Stop with that BS, it's embarrassing. "What is the measure of a man?" lol. Has everyone forgotten what Torment was really like? Now since I've mentioned it, I want to emphasize again how important it is to have a cohesive style in your setting. And let me be clear about what I now mean by "setting". Setting is not just background art. As pertains to story, setting is practically everything, all of the contents, except the "movement". You do whatever works, whatever gives the strongest experience. That is, if you are making a game, and not some design ethic. And also, if you're going to have an optional 15 ****ing level mega dungeon with epic monsters and gear, the "option" to do it or not NEEDS to have some (major) impact on the story, unless you want your story to be **** for everyone who doesn't want to pretend that it's not there. It can be fun, but then why are you looking at the screen? To help you imagine stuff that's more interesting than what's represented on the screen? For ****'s sake.

I don't have anything against romance, angst, strife, or whatever, but I want to emphasize that the written part of NPC characterizations should be better integrated with the rest of the game (interconnected things are more meaningful, naturally). Lets look at 2 things that Planescape Torment had going for it compared to say BG2. 1)Unique visual design and animations for all party NPCs (and many other NPCs as well, not to mention overall greater detail and higher quality animation). Well designed visuals (with good style) have a lot more to do with these characterizations than some writerly types maybe think. Remember, Torment had a floating skull, a chick with a tail, and a chick with wings, and these visual characteristics figured into their background stories and were a major part of their "personality" and charm. Not to mention more unique (and attractive) designs for NPCs can improve the quality of the overall setting by leaps and bounds. 2)NPCs had a bit more to say and do in the context of the adventure. NPC dialogue/banter and stuff like that should more often than not take into account and/or be triggered by what is happening in quests, and their contents should more often than not BE about the quests and what the party is doing, not about personal **** (unless you want to write a party NPC that is worthless and comically self absorbed). It doesn't matter as much that the writing is "emotional" or "deep" or whatever, as it matters that things like NPC characterizations are appropriate to the story in contents, timing, etc. So there's lots of stuff to consider with NPCs: stuff like special music, unique models, unique animations, special abilities (with unique animations and effects), which are integrated with stuff like scripted events that intertwine with main story events quests (and the majority of what you are doing in the game should by connected to, i.e. part of, the main storyline/quest). And finally, a rant: the party NPC concept art that has been released is really bad (nothing against the drawing skills of the artist). I'd read some posts in the forum saying that they were good, but I've seen pretty everything that has been revealed so far and it is all looks bland and unimaginative. If the Obsidian artists can't create interesting looking central characters, what are the chances that the entire settings won't be dull and uninspired. Why isn't this an issue with more people? I even read a ****ing post on this forum (or Kickstarter) complementing the visual design of the Edair character for including "sensible" gear with an eye toward "utility" (or some ****, don't remember the exact quote). I mean, you want character concepts with an eye toward "UTILITY", are you ****ting me? This game is going to have magic, a lottery of souls, monks with diamond hard skin, etc., etc. **** your "utility" style. Make the NPCs look interesting and reflect interesting (fictional) cultures that came from somewhere, made it somewhere, and have lots to show off for it. FFS, any of the mainstream fantasy JRPGs, pick one, has better style than what's been shown with Project Eternity.