[Is Obsidian trying to rush this game?]

Wasteland 2 release is Wasteland 2 beta

 

Do you see a pattern?

 

 

That's just a facet of PC game development. It's not that games used to be be released when they were finished, but rather that developers were either unable or not allowed to patch in additional content and fixes. You'll notice that the RPG-of-the-year, Divinity: Original Sin, also launched without several important features that were patched in over the following months.

 

There's a reason why there are "restored content" mods for classic games like Baldur's Gate or KOTOR.

 

And let me tell you a little secret any game developer or writer knows very intimately: nothing is EVER finished.

[The music! Good or no?]

That is incredible.

[Lets talk about Crafting / Enchanting]

I think crafting really only works in single player games with finite resources where resource management is a major aspect of the game (like TLOU). If you can't buy arrows, there's a fun dynamic in scrounging for the materials and skills to make your own--and when you can only manage to craft a half dozen arrows, you are much more invested in each shot--literally and emotionally.

 

But Pillars of Eternity is not that kind of game. Shops are plentiful and have varied stocks, which restock over time. This renders the crafting system largely irrelevant.

 

Why?

 

Its more efficient to simply purchase basic goods, and it doesn't make sense to be able to craft advanced goods from a lore perspective. This isn't Recettear, after all.

 

...

 

I haven't played with either system much, but as much as I think crafting is unnecessary and a drain on resources better spent elsewhere, I think that enchanting could potentially make a lot of sense in the game. Well, depending pon how it is implemented.

 

Again, from a lore perspective it wouldn't make a lot of sense to enchant items with powerful ubermagicks. But what would make sense is if enchantments acted as item buffs--just like she!!s on creatures. That is to say, they could grant temporary effects to items for the cost of some gold and/or items.

 

IE you could enchant a sword to do fire damage for its next 15 attacks, or enchant a helmet to deflect the next 5 critical hits, etc., etc.

 

The temporary nature would allow enchanting to cohere with the lore/roleplay aspect, as well as create a much more tactical dynamic than permanent enchants.

[Is it just me or combat is really tedious?]

Swen flatly stated that he will no longer use this method of fundraising! I can't really blame him because I understand he must have felt constantly pulled in different directions by the community. However, he has carefully listened to the feedback to the point of almost completely overhauling the gameplay so close to the release. There are no reason to expect anything less from Obsidian.

 

You are completely misrepresenting him.

 

 

As I mentioned in this interview, the current thinking is that we shouldn’t go back to Kickstarter. That’s not because we’re ungrateful of the support we received through our Kickstarter community or because all those rewards caused a bit of extra work, but because I think the crowdfunding pool is limited and it should be fished in by those who really need it. Since we now can, I think we should first invest ourselves and then see if we need extra funds to fuel our ambitions. Only then it makes sense to look at crowd funding. I know several of our backers will be displeased by this, so it could be that we still change our minds, but if that is the case, I do think the the format we’ll use or the way we’ll do it will be different than how we did it for Divinity: Original Sin. (Update: I forgot to mention in the original version of this post that we will be looking at ways of engaging our community sooner in development, but haven’t made any decisions on this)

 

The plan was never for Larian to use KS for every single game. The plan was always to use the funds to develop a solid engine, which they could then use to quickly produce subsequent games using their own money + profits from D:OS and D:DC. Now that they have the engine built, the cost for subsequent titles should be much, much, much less. Crowdfunding is too unreliable to ever be useful as a primary financial model. In fact, many KS developers have stated that they view their initial successes as little more than "proof" that their ideas are viable, which can then be used to help arcue publisher support for future titles.

 

Larian's development of D:OS is, I think, a model for the crowdfunded games to follow. It was a very open development process, which worked to the enormous benefit of both gamers and developers. Who would have thought? Actually communicating with your target audience to learn what they like or don't like instead of dictating that to them is a more reliable approach.

[Is it just me or combat is really tedious?]

I think some of the frustration that is felt with combat comes from being thrown into the deep end, so to speak.

 

That's certainly part of it. I think another (big) part of it is just the lack of feedback. IE the lack of SFX. When you don't hear a sword clashing against armor, it's hard to feel like the attack has accomplished much. That there's no visible HP stat, either, further distances the player from the combat.

 

 

Heh! It all depends. Obsidian did the entire IWD2 in 8 months! Think about that, and think about all the changes D:OS underwent in 4 months time. So, the big question is: Will they listen?

 

DOS was in open alpha/beta for closer to 8 months, not 4. 

[How to make a Stamina/HP system work]

 

 

 

 

Easily enough solved. For example:

 

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -1/round when out of combat.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -5/round when in combat.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -10/round for 5 rounds after using ability/spell X.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -50/round for 10 rounds after using ability/spell Y.

 

Very simple and intuitive: low-stress of walking around and talking consumes little energy; high stress of combat consumes more energy; increased stress of certain special abilities and/or spells temporarily increases much greater quantities of energy.

 

sounds kind of convoluted - the stamina as stamina and health as health is fine - but there'd be too many different abilites reflecting different stamina drains for the other part.  Plus it'd suck royally to be told you don't have enough stamina for ability-x when that ability is the choice you need to win and end the fight.

For a more simulationist game, sure.  Just not for this type of rpg.

 

 

Less convoluted than the current damage system, IMHO.

 

Anyway, you're misunderstanding something: in my proposed solution, stamina is NOT a consumable resource. Using a (certain) spell/ability would not consume stamina, but rather change the rate and which stamina decays. Once stamina hits zero, the character would receive the requisite negative status effects--but nothing would prevent that character from still using abilities/spells that increase stamina decay.  Just do the math: if you have 0 stamina and are losing 5 stamina per round and perform a spell that temporarily increases that rate to -10 stamina per round, how much stamina will you have 20 rounds later? The same amount of stamina as if you had not used that spell: zero.

 

EDIT: the idea is simply to "tighten" the already-existing systems so that the systemization abstractions are less abstract. Which should be the goal of any game designer.

 

EDIT: and I am also not thinking that every, or even most spells or abilities would effect stamina at all--just the really powerful ones. IE if you go "berserk" and do a hugely powerful attack, there should be a stamina cost for that. It would only be applied to certain high-level abilities.

[Is it just me or combat is really tedious?]

Msxyz: I agree. The least we can do is to tell them how and where this feels wrong for a CRPG with RTwP like this and then hope they'll listen. 

 

Honestly, with how little time they've allocated for the remainder of development it seems unlikely they intend to listen to any suggestions re: already-implemented systems. 4 months is sufficient to iron out bugs, but is it sufficient to strip out and replace--or at minimum refine--the systems they've already got in place?

[How to make a Stamina/HP system work]

Ok, but is your system any different from traditional RPGs?

The way I understand it, you want just have normal HP and stamina used for abilities, or is stamina also temporary hitpoints?

Either way, how are you not reintroducing the problems the system now is meant to get rid of, e.g. that a healer prolongs your adventuring day and is more or less a must have?

 

I understand the gripes people have with this system from a semantic point of view, but I always ask myself what would be different if they just renamed everything by saying stamina is HP and health is some kind of obscure fatigue making you need to rest.

 

What would be different is that A) the systemizations would make logical sense and B) removing unnecessary/redundant systemizations. What would be different is that the core mechanics would be simpler and more intuitive--and that is a thing to strive for.

 

So long as being "tired" is undesirable and healers are unable to heal that fatigure, the presence or absence of a dedicated healer in the party will never be a factor outside of combat.

 

 

 

Huh. I actually just posted a simple solution in the "tedious combat" thread. To restate it more succinctly here:

 

1. Health should represent health and Stamina should represent stamina (currently Health represents stamina and Stamina represents health).

2. Only Health should be "damaged" by enemy attacks. Stamina should be an independent variable.

3. Stamina should decay at a constant rate: while in normal gameplay, it should decay slowly; while in combat, it should decay faster.

4. When Stamina hits 0, the character should become "exhausted" and receive a number of negative status effects that remain until resting/camping.

 

....

 

There is no reason to have two different abstractions for "HP." That just makes the system needlessly complicated and unintuitive.

I like this except the idea that stamina decrease automatically. That puts an artificial limit on the combat encounter. Rather I would spend stamina until it is exausted.

 

 

Easily enough solved. For example:

 

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -1/round when out of combat.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -5/round when in combat.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -10/round for 5 rounds after using ability/spell X.

Stamina: reduces at a rate of -50/round for 10 rounds after using ability/spell Y.

 

Very simple and intuitive: low-stress of walking around and talking consumes little energy; high stress of combat consumes more energy; increased stress of certain special abilities and/or spells temporarily increases much greater quantities of energy.

[How to make a Stamina/HP system work]

Huh. I actually just posted a simple solution in the "tedious combat" thread. To restate it more succinctly here:

 

1. Health should represent health and Stamina should represent stamina (currently Health represents stamina and Stamina represents health).

2. Only Health should be "damaged" by enemy attacks. Stamina should be an independent variable.

3. Stamina should decay at a constant rate: while in normal gameplay, it should decay slowly; while in combat, it should decay faster.

4. When Stamina hits 0, the character should become "exhausted" and receive a number of negative status effects that remain until resting/camping.

 

....

 

There is no reason to have two different abstractions for "HP." That just makes the system needlessly complicated and unintuitive.

[Is it just me or combat is really tedious?]

I'm not sure how I feel about combat.

 

I think, perhaps, it's still a little too fast.

 

Beyond that, I think it suffers from two chief problems:

 

1. The experience abstraction makes combat less interesting/rewarding. When my party kills an ogre in a fit of martial skill and courage, nothing changes--they are no stronger or more "experienced" after the fight than before. The "reality" that the XP system abstracts is that each party member became more experienced from the combat--but this is not reflected in the mechanics. Instead, that combat "experience" is arbitrarily tied to the quest system, which results in the counter-intuitive effect of becoming more experienced not through actual experience, but through the recognition of random people (NPCs). This baffling inconsistency robs combat of the immediacy and importance it ought to have.

 

2. The unnecessary abstraction of health into two different stats. "Health" and "Stamina." And then, of course, their counter-intuitive reversal. Stamina is reduced when you take damage/wounds (which makes zero sense: health should be the value that decreases when a sword cleaves through your shoulder, not stamina); the health stat is seemingly reduced at random, and seems to be more an abstraction of stamina than health (as once your health--stamina--is depleted you can no longer fight).

 

The fact that these two integral aspects of combat are more than unintuitive, but counter-intuitive, really destroys the experience.

 

......

 

But they can be fixed, though whether or not Obsidian is willing to do so remains to be seen.

 

First: experience should be earned for killing enemies. It can be weighed less or more than quest EXP, or it can scale to discourage "grinding" (which no matter what I'm told is something I refuse to believe anyone ever did with any Infinity Engine game), but it most certainly NEEDS to exist.

 

Second: the dual health abstractions need to be completely overhauled. Make health represent health--when you take damage, you lose health. And you should ONLY have to worry about health depleting from damage. It makes no sense to have two different stats that are susceptible to "damage." Keep stamina, but make it represent stamina--have its depletion occur NOT as a result of damage, but as a result of action. IE it decays over time--slowly during normal gameplay, faster during combat. Total stamina would be dependent on player stats. When stamina reaches zero, the characters should become "exhaused" and receive numerous (temporary) penalties that persist until they rest at an inn or camp.

 

These seem like very obvious solutions to very obvious problems to me, which begs the question: why weren't they implemented ages ago?

[Conversation confusion]

They're not, though. They're written specifically in the "voice" of Charname, and are written from his/her perspective. Granted, in most cases the identity of the speaker didn't matter because the dialog was fairly generic--but there were still instances where you could have Minsc talking about being a Bhaalspawn, or Viconia reminiscing about growing up in Candlekeep, things like that.

[The music! Good or no?]

One thing that I think is a good idea for ANYONE composing or determining music for a game is to follow Koji Kondo's approach: when he composes music for a game, he sits in a room with his eyes closed and listens to it. For hours. If he doesn't get sick or tired of it after several hours, then it's good music for a game. Alternatively, if it does begin to grate, then it's no good. This approach makes a lot of sense because game music loops, and is generally consumed over fairly long durations.

 

And while some of us may not recognize his name, I'm certain that ALL of us have heard and can immediately recognize Koji Kondo's music. He's the guy who has composed (and continues to compose) all of the iconic tunes Nintendo uses in its biggest games--most notable Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

[The music! Good or no?]

One thing I forgot to mention that needs to be said:

 

The single most important piece of music is the title theme. The music that plays at the main menu, or during the ultimate climax of the endgame--the very first piece of music the player hears, even before he or she starts playing the game for the first time; the very first piece of music the player hears EVERY time he or she loads up a game to continue playing.

 

Why is it so important?

 

It sets the stage for the ENTIRE play experience. It establishes the overall emotional tone of the entire game.

 

At this point, it's premature to discuss what PoE's main theme/title theme should sound like because Obisidian has been so mum on details of the main plotline. What is the tone of the story Pillars of Eternity will try to tell? Will it be ambitious and rousing, like Baldur's Gate? Introspective and mysterious like Planescape Torment? Wonderous and severe like Icewind Dale? Melancholy or Joyful? Regimented or free-form? We don't know. The important takeaway here--the only takeaway, really--is that the main title theme is immensely important.

 

An easy way to tell if a title theme is appropriate (at least for dunderheads like myself who know nothing of the correct musical terminology) is to apply adjectives to it. If a track of music generates the same adjectives to describe it as the main narrative, it fits; if it doesn't, it doesn't. The same applies to character themes. It's all about... resonance. When the music resonates with the thematic or character elements of the game, the game world and the people in it become greater than the sum of the disparate parts.

 

Am I explaining this well yet?

 

....

 

Re: the music in the beta, I think I (and others here) was too harsh in my initial reaction (though that is partly Obsidian's fault: if they're only going to put a few tracks of music in the beta build, they really need to put their best foot forward, so to speak), because--evidently--it is NOT character theme music or title theme music, but rather town music. That is to say, it's intended to be background music, and it is therefore acceptable that it lacks a strong melody/tune, it's fine that it's not terribly memorable, because it is meant to remain in the background to accentuate the experience. And as background music, it is absolutely fantastic.

 

But, as a backer, and as a gamer who has seen so many games try to echo the successes of the classic CRPGs and fall flat on their face in every respect, I won't really be happy until I hear some music that is meant to be in the "foreground." I want to hear something strong, something memorable--something that makes me sit up in my chair and take notice.

 

....

 

A third and final disparate thought: something I've considered re: game music is that, in many cases, older tracks are as or more memorable than newer tracks, even though much of the older music was hampered by technological limitations. Nobuo Uematsus midi music in the early Final Fantasies remains far superior the the richly layered orchestral tracks found in the newer games. I think a big part of that is simply having a strong, recognizable tune--a simple string of notes that dominate the piece. If you can reduce a track of music to a simple midi arrangement and it's still good, it's good music; if not, it's probably not good music (at least for games). Once you've got that simple "core" (the tune?) additional sounds and melodies can be added/layered on top of it--IE the difference between the midi One Winged Angel and the orchestral version found in the (terrible) Advent Children movie.

[One small but important problem with the beta no one seems to mention: WASD.]

Personally, I prefer to have my cursor free to interact with the game world instead of constantly dashing it to the peripheral edges of the screen. Its more efficient. Also, mouse look tends to be too sensitive, and therefore imprecise, for my tastes.

[Conversation confusion]

The verb "to speak" in English refers to the production of language in general, be it voiced aloud or written as text.

 

And, FYI, almost all of the speech I the old Infinity Engine games was conveyed solely by text.

 

If there's anything in my posts that still confuses, let me know and I'll try to elucidate later... When I have access to a physical keyboard.

[Conversation confusion]

In BG2 (and other games) party members can initiate dialog and "act" in conversations, but their dialog--and dialog options--are the exact same. IE its dialog written for Char name, but being spoken (by accident) by a party member.

 

So you occasionally have instances where there's a conversation between NPC A and Char name, only Jaheira is speaking Charname's lines--which can obviously result I out of character dialog.

[Conversation confusion]

As long as the PC's portrait/name appears in the dialog interface I don't really see a problem. From a roleplaying perspective I hate it when party members can interact in conversations (why is Jaheira suddenly speaking with Charname's voice?!).

 

I can see how this might compel some gamers to focus on focusing solely on conversations bolstering stat for the PC, but the same temptation would exist if any party member could speak, too, right? Those players would just focus on specializing each party member toward a specific dialog advantage--IE one party member who can charm anyone, one who can intimidate anyone, etc., etc.

 

Personally, I prefer only being able to manipulate dialog stats (or only need I g to) for the one PC. That way I only have to troleplay one PC instead of six.

[One small but important problem with the beta no one seems to mention: WASD.]

Maybe this is too trivial for its own thread; maybe not.

 

There are two axial command sets in the game: camera movement and game speed. I think we can all agree that, by far, players will be moving the camera far more than adjusting the game speed.

 

Fewer than 1 out of 5 humans are left-handed. Ignoring my fellow ambidexes, this means we can expect the majority of PoE players to play the game with their right hand on the mouse, and the left hand resting at WASD/space.

 

It would therefore be logical to have the default keybindings set so that WASD control the camera, and the arrow keys (or, alternatively, QE) the game's speed. Instead of the reverse, as is currently the case.

 

And yes, I realize we can rebind keys (though it doesn't quite work in the current build) but we should not have to. The default key bindings should always be the most accessible to the greatest number of players.

[The music! Good or no?]

I'm not sure I understand how camera angle and how close music is to the foreground correlate...?

I'm sorry. I thought I was clear. The further away the camera is from the game world, the further away the players are from the people and emotions populating it. How do you form an emotional connection to a character rendered so small you cannot see his or her face or hear his or her voice? How do you invest a scene with sorrow or humor or ire or suspense when viewed through a static lens perched high above?

 

With music.

 

Background music adds to the emotional and aesthetic landscape of a 3D environment; foreground music determines the emotional and aesthetic landscape.

 

....

 

Several people here are using Straw Man arguments. I am not saying that every, or even a majority of the tracks in an isometric RPG should strongly and deliberately convey emotional tones. But -some- of them do. Ideally, in an isometric RPG, you have lots of generic background music: stuff that plays when you're moseying through town, or wandering through a forest. But when the gameplay and narrative reach a climax, so too should the music. There's a reason some of the most memorable tracks of gaming music are character themes, boss themes and title themes. Music should be powerful and moving--not always, but once in a while. This is extremely important in an RPG.

 

Have I explained myself better this time? I'm typing all this via my tablet, so its really difficult to go over and reread what I've written.

[Pretty disappointed, this launches in December?]

I agree on the whole of it that the four months or so Obsidian has slated for the beta feels... foolishly optimistic.

 

But at the same time, you have o recognize two things: first, that once the groundwork for a game is in place (which takes a long time) developing the rest--adding the polish to transform crude-hewn stone into faceted diamond, so to speak--can proceed with astonishing alacrity; and that how well and how quickly a team is able to complete this polish is more dependent on its collective competence than the time they have allocated to do it.

 

 

I would remind everyone of Divinity: Original Sin. It is one of the best-recieved CRPGs in more than a decade, and has remained at the top of Steam's bestselling titles since its release more than one month ago. From December 2013 to July 2014 it moved from open alpha to beta to its final release version--and the initial build of the alpha was in a very sorry state. Barely stable at all, missing most of its art assets, missing all of its sound effects and music, absent the fancier lighting effects, quest triggers, encounters, items--even entire dungeons.The people at Larian were clearly extraordinarily competent to transform that mess into DOS as we know it today inside of so short a span of time.

 

It seems appropriate that we expect Obsidian to be capable of improving their game as much as Larian. Though, again, I feel four months is foolishly short.

[The music! Good or no?]

Well, that said, one would expect the most emotionally relevant tracks to be tied to the main questions and companion quests, neither of which we have access to, so we'll simply have to wait and see. Or, rather, listen.

 

Ant -that- said, music-wise Obsidian had the opportunity to put their best foot forward with the beta title music. They chose to play generic town music instead. They blew it. Remember what Larian did when they didn't have awesome music ready for their game's aplha test? They didn't do anything. It was like two months and 10 updates before they put in even a small, placeholder playlist.

[Pretty disappointed, this launches in December?]

I think the main problem here is simply that, for all their KS updates, Obsidian really is not very communicative. At all. It really doesn't feel like they give a damn about what their backers care about so long as they can get the media to keep telling us its just like Baldur's Gate.

[The music! Good or no?]

I don't think anything of the music--which is the problem. Is terribly bland and forgettable. It would be perfectly serviceable in a game like The Elder Scrolls, where the music is meant to help immerse the player into the world--but in an isometric RPG the music needs to do a lot more. Because the camera is so far removed from the action, because we don't see any of the characters faces or hear any of their voices, we rely on the music to set the emotional tone of every scene.

 

The oldIE games understood this perfectly. In an isometric game, the music needs to be at the forefront, not in the background. Sadly Obsidian seems to have forgotten this. The music in POE would be fine in a 3D immersive game, but it is absolutely insufficient for an isometric game.

[The experience system]

 

Um... I find this whole absence of combat experience to be completely baffling. I've been anxious about POE for a while since Obsidian seemed so resolutely opposed to sharing anything substantial to the backers, but I still had faith that they could deliver a competent CRPG based on their prior work.

But quest-only experience is... Not at all indicative of competence.

Has Obsidian made any real attempt to justify this? I'd appreciate it if someone could point me at a defense for this nonsense.

 

 

My understanding is that Oblivion believes "Per Kill" XP promotes degenerative game play. Where people will choose to take the non-combat route for XP, and then go back and kill everything to gain additional XP. I know I have done that on more than one occasion (The sahuagin city in BG2 comes to mind as a notable example).

And that's... a bad thing? Since when? I always thought having multiple play styles was supposed to be something to strive for. And that the extra XP for superfluous murder served to "tempt" players to evil acts by offering greater rewards.

 

By removing combat EXP, it seems to me that Obsidian has greatly reduced both the complexity and immediacy of the game.

 

...That latter bit being a big problem I don't think many of us, in this thread at least, are recognizing. The chief problem with the current EXP system is that it unnecessarily breaks up the play experience. It separates the moments when the player feels as though he or she has become more powerful (defeating a tough monster) from the moment that the game systems grant the player more power (quest resolution).

 

Actually, the more I think on it, the more problems I imagine--yet I cannot think of a single benefit of quest-only EXP.

 

What happens when we kill a boss without accepting a corresponding quest? What happens when a quest is broken? What happens to exploration when there is no tangible reward for the risk of combat? What happens when a player decides that the best roleplaying option for a quest is not to complete it at all?

 

This feels like a Bethesda decision, where they don't care about roleplaying. Here, now, the optimal play style will be to complete every single quest in the game, regardless of what that quest is. Here's hoping it'll at least be better than Skyrim and not force players to murder innocent NPCs and then eat their flesh. Yeesh.

[Another comment on the exp system]

Experience from combat is much less of an abstraction than earning experience from completing a quest.

 

Just think about it. Which activity is more likely to make you more proficient at sword combat: cutting up goblins with a sword, or finding farmer Giles' missing cow?