nipsen

Why is that? Other than the formation movement and pauses, what's the actual difference?

The self-insight on this forum is amazing, as always. Your reasoning as well - brilliant. So explain this to me again: why will taking practical advice from people who can't string one single sentence together without some sort of blatant contradiction in it, lead to Obsidian making better games? Or, if that's not what this forum is about: why will making changes in a game based on feedback from people who literally can't remember what they said two posts ago, end up creating good and appealing advertisement? Doing that makes very little sense, unless your idea is to make a game for 10 forumers. That when they get what they want, specifically, like with PoE - don't actually like anymore anyway. I'm merely proposing that a project like that probably can't succeed. Anyway. You probably also understand that when you resort to inventing things in the personal life of others - people you don't actually know in person - that this says very little about me, and a lot about you and your thoughts? That you just home in on personal issues and emotional problems is pretty hilarious. Although you really don't exist in the same league as the "you have aspergers!" guy. Who, as everyone could see, had no aspergers at all. And therefore should be assumed to be reasonable, no matter what he said. Unlike me, who could be dismissed because I was supposedly mentally ill. You see, the only reason I sound serious when I type this stuff down, is that I can't bring myself to genuinely laugh about what some of you are doing here, because it's kind of serious. Another thing is that even with all my long rants - and they are just rants, I come here to vent for entertainment - I don't actually spend a lot of time here compared to some of you. In relative terms, I visit here, and most of you live here. So even though you feel like whatever happens to come out of your mouths is justified and reasonable, literally no matter what you say - I would really encourage you to limit yourselves at least once in a while.

Yes, this forum. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to understand why I'm genuinely upset that a few internet complainers, on this forum, made sure PoE became an expensive disappointment. Or why I'm surprised Obsidian let this dominate not just this production, but their next ones as well. Or why I'm unhappy that the "focus group" determining whether or not Obsidian is on the right track is made up of people who have huge difficulties with following any other line of reasoning than: "I like this thing that other people also seem to like, whatever it was". But I don't mind telling you why this annoys me, over and over again. Yes, you'll persuade a lot of people by essentially calling us idiots for liking a system you dislike. I'm sure there are games which'll cater to your genius somewhere, but perhaps you should consider joining a science institute or a research team at some university to challenge your astronomical intellect and fuel your ego instead of playing videogames designed for us, lowly rabble of humanity. That's really dramatic and entertaining, and all that - but the game was just designed for people with normal, average functioning brains. The ruleset was much easier to grasp for new players than d&d standard, for example. A distinct advantage it had over D&D was that the main governing stats actually made narrative sense. (Such as: "I'm mighty! That means I punch really hard! But can't necessarily hit everything I punch!". Makes sense, not extremely difficult, yes? And it's not difficult to see that a new player would find this easier to understand than "you are extremely dextrous and nimble, but until you become level 7, and also have 13 strength, and choose "finesse" as a tweak, you can't make your sword hit the ground you're standing on). The disadvantage Josh's system had was that it was an unknown, and something different is scary and makes nerds nauseous. The feedback in general also was extremely strange, in the sense that many of the complaints also would have applied to for example the ruleset in Baldur's Gate. Obsidian then unfortunately took that feedback seriously, and tweaked the system to a target for severely impaired brains. And 10 people on the forum hailed it as the best decision since.. at least as far back as their short term memory would go. But what they ended up with literally is something that has the appearance of a d&d-type crpg, with stats that increment, and all the micromanaging, potion and rest-spam. But really is a game you play much in the same way as Diablo 3. All the way down to how you choose a new spell or an ability every other level upgrade, that you then spam for a few hours. I'm just saying that marketing this as a "traditional isometric crpg" is a bit like selling frozen toast as "freshly baked home-made bread". Frozen bread might be what you want sometimes - but you are going to be unhappy if you pay a premium and expect freshly baked bread. And then get frozen toast. And in this case, what I got was to pay a premium. Then I got to see and nibble the edge of the freshly baked bread. Before the store pulls it away, slices it apart, jams it in a bag, puts the bread in a freezer for 6 months, and then gives it back, saying: "here's your freshly baked bread!". So this is not just obnoxious, and makes sure I'll never buy another Obsidian product again. It's also a very unwise way to target your sell. In that, like I also pointed out during the beta, that Obsidian can't sell the game as an isometric crpg in the tradition of Baldur's Gate - if they then change the product halfway to become a diablo 3 clone. Except it's diablo 3 with cumbersome and unintuitive controls, a bunch of clicking and pausing, and lots and lots of dialogue interrupting the fighting as well. If you do that, then you will obviously disappoint your target audience, and miss the ones who wanted a diablo 3 clone. In fact, you'll also disappoint the people who want diablo 3, because they want something less cumbersome. Making this just bad business overall. But. And this is why it's so entertaining to come back here: you still have these 10 people on here who insist that since the game didn't sell negative amounts of copies, the decisions made were the best decisions ever! And if the game didn't sell enough or got cool reviews, for example from how haphazard and grindy the system was, how unrewarding the fights became, etc. Well then it's just because Obsidian sucks and Josh Sawyer is a bad designer, etc. And if all else fails, you simply insist that anyone who won't listen to you are "crazy" or in "a bad place". Obviously, if you don't agree with the brilliance of the direction Obsidian took PoE in - the one production that was supposed to put them back on the map - then you are just psychologically unstable! It's so simple! The best part is that I'm probably the one person here who takes this crap the least seriously. What I am doing, however, is to describe the context of Obsidian's decision-making process on PoE. And I'm doing that to explain to you what has to change if Josh is going to avoid the same problem with PoE 2. Otherwise, we would be expecting two different things to happen, while using the same process twice. Which is something "most people" don't think is reasonable to expect.

And after that we'll just have to make sure no one on rpgcodex, Gaf or IGN ever hears about it. Or, even more difficult, find a dev that doesn't cave to the first and best internet complaint. So that the game won't be patched apart after release, or simply delayed six months while the first iteration of the actually implemented and fully playable system is replaced, like was the case with PoE. And that would probably work out, yes. Until then - enjoy your single-digit IQ adjusted games. I'm sure you will find lots and lots of them, that everyone here will love.

I agree, of course. But what happened here was that Obsidian, or Josh Sawyer, basically, introduced the ruleset over the first year or so. Here, on the forum, and in the kickstarter updates (which was basically the same thing). People were excited about it, it drew people here, and a lot of discussion, for a small forum and a tiny title like this, turned up around the ruleset. That so many people were interested in the old isometric type rpg-games was great. And certain developers were talking about how nice it is to make an rpg without the d&d license. I was interested in seeing what Obsidian could make on their own. These update threads also had a lot of traffic externally, and people signed up to post one or two posts, then leave, waiting for the release of the game. And the updates were interesting, for example the Accuracy vs. Defense as a mechanic, that you can still read about in Josh's updates. So towards the public beta, Obsidian implements this system. And I get to play this little gem of a game, with a very intelligent and satisfying ruleset that.. essentially is the game-master's wet dream in terms of designing monster-encounters as well as duels with other adventuring parties. I am thoroughly impressed, and I assure you that happens extremely rarely. But a few people on the forum complained that the system is stupid. It doesn't act in the way they expect. A very limited number of posters spammed the forum with what could be mistaken for sad drunken rants about Josh Sawyer hating gamers. Two people wrote a 50 page dissertation on how to flip a coin, and why flipping a coin is the ultimate form of game balance. That they in the end were so proud of that they deleted it off the link they gave away so others could bask in their wisdom. Outstanding disagreements were decided on by the number of "likes" on the post that complained in the most appealing way. Boo and romance was mentioned a lot. And Obsidian changed their ruleset because of that. So just to explain why this pissed me off: I got to play a very good game with an absolutely brilliant system. It had some issues to sort out, but you could easily see that this was going to work. And no more than 10 people had Obsidian replace it over a 6 month period, a 6 month delay of the release, after the game essentially was done, because they complained on the forum in a particularly appealing way. It was an incredibly bad decision. And frankly anyone who plays either Tyranny or PoE can see why, if they don't get bored and quit after the first hour or so. Because the game has been "balanced" against the active trigger-abilities and hit-point values, so that any strategy or thinking is not required, and in fact punished. If you think that you might find a strategy or a particular approach to defeat the boss or something like that - not going to happen. You simply need to grind until you level up. And once you do, the boss will die. That's how the game is balanced, and that's what the ruleset requires. Which is what "everyone" wanted, allegedly. And anyone saying anything different were "crazy" and marginal people who don't buy games anyway. And besides, according to people, MOBA and Diablo 3 and simplistic trigger-ability systems is the way to go to appeal to the "masses". Paradox interactive may also have been involved, with their usual method of focusing on small fan-communities and youtube promotion from specific partnerships, however small. Which may possibly explain why one youtube channel and this forum with complainers somehow became so important in the "revision" stage. But that's not what I helped kickstart. In fact, it wasn't what Obsidian worked on for the whole development process up to that point, what they presented to us, or what I got to play at the start of the public beta. So that's the story about how no more than 10 internet people managed to make Obsidian take a solid game, that would have been something they would have been proud of later down the line, and turn it into a 2-minute Moba spinoff. Somehow, these ten people weren't apologizing to Obsidian after release, when it turns out that sales-targets similar to World of Warcraft somehow fails to materialize, as was supposedly assured thanks to how amazing Obsidian was at "responding to the community's concerns". And the same 10 people - check the names, these are the same members who spam around every launch - still stick around to talk up the next few releases, and how great it is that Obsidian revises stuff to conform with trends everyone else are following. They don't care about whether the solution is any good of course. Actually, I can't tell if any of them even play the games. But they are always supportive of bland and unintelligent solutions for the game, that underestimate the target audience to having somewhere in the range of a single digit IQ level. Meanwhile, Obsidian is always happy to take on feedback and supposedly are always willing to try new things. As long as it's stupid and simplistic. And as long as the actually good systems are never actually tried in a full game. Not a good approach. And it's a bit difficult to understand that - when Obsidian know they could pump out pretty cheap games on the engine they're using now - that they couldn't release just one of them with an experimental ruleset that "no one likes". If for no reason only for the sake of variety. As opposed to the current approach that merely ensures that the ruleset and the system is identical every time, and that it bores everyone to tears as they play. So they will stop playing the game, and indeed go and play something else. Before they return at the announcement of a sequel, quite surprised to see the lead design - again - pitching the original ruleset, in the identical fashion as before the first release. With the same grognards complaining - two years later - in the identical fashion as ahead of the first release. I'll give you one piece of advice, that may sound ironic to you because you are here, and even counter-intuitive. But it is this: do not think that internet fora are representative of larger groups. You can have this demonstrated with the PoE kickstarter with numbers that are somewhat easy to grasp, since the actual fanbase for the game and around the kickstarter was so small. But out of that community, out of some 70-80k original backers, less than 50 ever had any opinion on the game before launch. Where most of these opinions were this: let's just wait and see at launch - I haven't played the full game and I don't have a bombastic opinion about the ruleset yet, because I'm not an internet crazy with an utterly polarized opinion set I have chosen by a coin-flip. That now colours all my impressions afterwards. And makes sure that my opinions are either rabidly in favor, or deadly set against whatever is suggested, regardless of facts or argument. It's possible to use that sort of internet opinion to sell a game. Many large studios do this extremely successfully. But they usually have 1 million potential customers to pander for, rather than the 100k Obsidian has. So that when a fraction of this consumer base is wooed by the exclusive attention they feel they have, Obsidian is left with perhaps 1k copies sold, rather than the 100k copies of the larger production. Those 1k true believers then are not big enough as a group to ever manage to make the release "trend". And follow this all the way through, and you simply end up with a game that is not just unpopular, but also sucks ass. In a vain attempt to appeal to the mass market, that anyone with a brain would see would never work. And you made it with my money, while lying to us about what you were making all the way through. So go ahead and imagine that this will make you a huge amount of fans over time, Obsidian. But it's not the case. What you're doing is to tell your mainstay audience to go to hell, while placating a couple of your super-fans on the internet. Maybe they'll want to bear your kids or something - but that's the only thing you will ever get out of this. edit: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article117250538.html

Oh, you're just adulting my socks off here now. Meanwhile, Tale just messaged me and said I should ask mum forgiveness for using bad language, and not being nice to the other kids. Or else I will be sent to detention. That this is where Obsidian maps out what is the "majority opinion" about their games is somewhere between comical and just tragic. 10 guys defined what "everyone" of the 80k kickstarters wanted. And "nobody cares" if anyone disagrees with those 10 people. In fact, if you don't suck up to the mods, you're going to get banned. That's your focus-group, Josh.

In other words, you will allow any opinion other than "I wonder what Obsidian will make without the backseat developer experts". Which is hilarious out of left field crazy talk. What I'm asking for, Gifted, is for for example you to explain why Diablo 3 is relevant when it comes to the ruleset in an rpg. Rather than contradicting whatever is said and insisting that ten ditto-posts on the internet makes any discussion unnecessary. As, by ten ditto-posts and a short statement, the truth about all is revealed. That you feel this explanation is not needed, because of your superior opinion and ten ditto-posts, is of course noted. That's just fine. I don't begrudge anyone their opinions. My problem here is the fact that people from Obsidian argued, privately to me, that the "common opinion on the forums seemed to be" your opinion. That person didn't say: "you know what - we just liked the things Gifted, MattMattt, Sensuki and friends said on the forum, and changed the game to fit with that because that was awesome!". They said: "we changed the system because "most people" wanted something else". Josh went on Gamescom(?) and said: "this wasn't what we started out with, but.." about the ruleset. So as long as you say: "I think this, and this is why, and I speak for no one else but myself(and three other people on the internet agrees, apparently)", then it's fine. The problem comes in when you as a moderator claims that there is no discussion to be had, as long as a forum-majority agrees with an unexplained statement. And this somehow finds itself into design-decisions for a game made on behalf of over 80k others, who have not been asked. In fact, they were sold on something completely different, as pointed out. Your waffling on the forums here was not part of the kickstarter pitch. But you and a tiny little internet group managed to push through changes to the game after the beta came out anyway. Congratulations, I guess. But call it what it was: a tiny part of the participants in the open beta - less than 1% of the 100 or so people who participated, had serious design-influence, that upended the system the kickstarter was sold on.

They're identical, save for some cosmetic changes. Not even the kindest review for PoE will bring up the rules and the gameplay-mechanics as it's strong suit, other than how it reminds people of the most annoying parts of Baldur's Gate (that is, the micromanagement bs and the missing turns, idiotic interrupt mechanics that only work in pnp, and the powercreep and potion/healing inflation and rest-spam thanks to the massive frequency of battles in a video-game rpg compared to the pnp games the d&d ruleset is actually intended for - all issues that a certain games-developer talked much about solving ahead of PoE's launch). Your turn, Fenix. What is your version of this, hmm? So who are "people", Fenix? I wanted a seasoned game-developer to try something creative without having a publisher hanging over their shoulder. And was sold - like many other kickstarters - on Josh's fairly specific introduction to this system as the development of the title started to take shape. Most of the people who participated on the forum then would say: "great, this looks good, let me know when the game comes out". When I played this in the beta, I was delighted they managed to get it to work. Now, I didn't make any demands, complained that Obsidian "betrayed the isometric rpg creed", or blew up over how Joshua Sawyer, the worst game-designer known to man, was allowed near a game. I didn't run around on the forum screaming that the game was "broken", because it didn't have cooldown abilities. And I did sure as hell not insist, while threatening to ban people who disagreed with me, that the only good rpg ever made was Diablo 3. What I said was that Obsidian shouldn't be so ****ing stupid as to throw away the existing system over some ****wit super-fans on the internet. So no, this wasn't "nipsen-based combat", that the "internet" didn't want. This was Josh Sawyer's many times previously announced system for the game we helped kickstart. But some **** with a youtube channel didn't like it, because it wasn't based on coin-flipping and 50% chances enough, like "real rpgs" - so **** everyone else. And a tiny little core of wankers on the internet hated it. And then somehow, for whatever reason I cannot understand, Obsidian pounced on this as an excuse to make a Diablo 3 clone - which I suppose is what they REALLY wanted to make all along, so they could give Josh the finger and cut his existing system to bits. And note - there's no abstract character over this system that was technically impossible to implement. The replacement system did, on the other hand, have multiple areas where it introduces specific and very unnecessary balancing issues. That as you know, PoE still has, a year after release. I wasn't the only person to say so when whoever idiot made the decision to throw the old system out the window. But you told them all to **** off. And now you have the balls to invent the story about how the "alternative" system that didn't suck was my invention, invented from scratch after the beta launched I suppose. And something only I wanted? An exclusive "nipsen-system". While what Obsidian went with, on the other hand, was a widely wished for system that "everyone" wanted. You lying sack of ****. Go to hell, and take your 10 other "forum-majority" **** with you. I know you all read this forum, so **** you. You have done nothing else but manage to exploit a developer who takes you as seriously as you take yourselves, to give you personally the attention that you don't deserve any more than the other very high number of backers who simply said: "great, let's see what you can do". What they didn't say, like me, was "and by all means, do not attempt to be creative if it annoys one ****ing youtuber on the internet, because what we really want is something bland and samey that is exactly as cumbersome as the original Black-Isle attempt to translate the d&d pnp rules - which we all know was perfect and ideal!". There's a reason why we didn't say that. And there's a reason why people who say: "I will trust the developer to do their best" will not spam the ****ing forum for months about, for example, of how Josh Sawyer is "a laughingstock of developers evrywhere lol". But you still somehow collectively managed to give this **** weight, in the absence of an internet mob decending on the forum to say: "No, please don't remove the system we were sold on through the initial 6 months after the kickstarter, because I really suspect that this is something that will happen - which is why I signed up on the forum". You stupid, ****ing idiots. There. All better now.

Fine. Obsidian took a suggestion from the internet to scuttle a working ruleset, that would cause a lot of extra work, cause a delay, in addition to being the most boring system a role-playing game has ever seen. And went with it. Obsidian made the call, and it was an impossibly bad one. Specially considering the suggestions came from a very narrow audience. Who later denied having had anything to do with it, and deleted their 50-page work that the game followed slavishly after the "tweaking" process was over. So no one would criticise either Obsidian for telling 400k kickstarter people to **** off based on the feedback of two people on their internet forums. Or the two trolls for having been involved in scuttling the game. But yes, it was Obsidian who made the call, and they ****ed up. Happy?

The profit-return argument was not the reason why Josh's ruleset - that he is apparently pitching a second time now - was scrapped for PoE. It was a couple of people here convincing themselves that MMO-gameplay was "objectively more fun", to quote a certain community moderator. So Obsidian had a choice between a system made by a veteran crpg-developer who plays pen and paper games, who proved the system could be tied into the overall design elements in practice as well as on paper. And between a system created by adding random things together that forum-people thought sounded good. And Obsidian went with the forum-committee system. So what is the reason for thinking Obsidian won't make the same choice again? What you're suggesting here is that if the forum-committee system they were "forced" to use is a success, over the scrapped system that actually made sense - then that will give Obsidian confidence to spite their new fans who love the forum-committe system. Wouldn't it make sense for Obsidian to continue with the MMO-like system with cooldowns coupled with micromanagement that replaced strategy - if that was a success? Like at least 2 forumers will claim at any point. After all, these 2 forumers are in a uniform majority that knows exactly what they want, even if it's very unspecific and flimsy when it comes to detail. So what possible other route could Obsidian go with their next game? After all, the fans have spoken. They want MMO-like rules with dials and numbers that have only cosmetic significance, where "DPS" replaces all other considerations. So that's how all "gamers" like their games, objectively speaking - I thought we had already decided on that discussion a year ago.

With this system there's not much difference at all between a high damage + low attack rate weapon or a low damage + high attack rate weapon though (assuming this Armor Rating entirely replaces DR). The only stats that would actually matter would be Penetration and DPS. I'd rather have something like the current system but represent improved armor penetration on some attacks as a % modifier or divisor to the targets DR (basically like how G.U.R.P.S. does it with Armor Divisor). Oh, look. Deja vu all over again.

"Strategy", here meaning: trigger sure-fire abilities and overwhelm the enemy, after you've leveled up past a certain point, so they can't wipe you out when they start spamming their own abilities. Like people sort of say, normal is plenty hard enough if you don't game the system. Or "learn to play", as it's called..

Hi I guess the GDC talk had something to do with it too. But yeah, the reported stats seem significant on the stat-sheet. But the derived stats (that govern the rolls) are affected by the class table growth much more than by the attributes. It of course also affects the saving throws the enemies need to beat, etc. And that's why you run into these difficulty spikes that you can't get past. You level a bit. And then you go back and just waltz through it like it's nothing.

It's a regular blow, seen through the game's system, basically And you're right, the active abilities in the game are very straight forward, and that's by intention. Meanwhile, in the realm of dicerolls underneath that, the stats you can change as a player don't really affect the derived stats to a significant degree compared to what the class table does. So it doesn't really matter what you pick. After you level up a bit, and meticulously cross out all the fedex quests before moving on to your next job. Basically, the stat-screen is just something for the players to fiddle around with, that looks familiar to players of the IE-games. But the aspects of the stat-system underneath this (from glancing at the class tables) that governs parts of the active abilities would have been extremely problematic if the class-tables weren't set in stone like they are, and essentially disconnected from the player stats. It's like the ones who set up the abilities and filled in the blanks didn't understand what the stats-system actually did, or the opportunities they had to make all of this very interesting. And then had to solve it by basically locking the characters down to the class-table before damage and so on would fit them. Making the game very linear and inflexible, to the point where you rely on system-trickery or grind to pass the difficulty spikes. That obviously are there, but can be managed, if you have enough dedication and time. Therefore the observation that Obsidian as a company developing new crpgs is not very promising, in spite of individual people in the company clearly having extremely good ideas. I mean, what Josh put up here was impressive. I'm not easily impressed, but what he came up with here was brilliant. If there was any justice in this world, that system would make it into a rulebook, and be promoted properly to gamemasters. Have done a few test-runs on it, and it does suit a computer-game more than pnp in the way it was done. But even before making some simplifications, it's.. so good. It deserves better than to be exclusively used by four nerds in Norway. I mean, it breaks my heart. It really does. Oh, hoho. :D Still more entertaining to read that than playing the game.

No, Nauz..hror. I mean that you read the description of an ability, like "Punch face!". And then you assume that this involves punching someone in the face. In PoE, it usually involves repeatedly placing your hand on someone's forehead and screaming "KAAAIIII!" really hard, several times, until the victim suddenly falls over once their HP reaches 0. So if you assumed on beforehand that it was just a normal punch, that speed, force and reach probably are factors in this - then you'd be completely wrong, and cripple your "Punch face!" ability if you specced towards what you assumed the "Punch face!" ability was. From, say, your imagination, or from Hollywood movies, or even experience. Since speed affects the number of "KAAAIAIIIIII!!" per second, force affects ear-bleeding speed, and reach is the radius of your bellowing. Which is obvious to exactly zero people. I'm not saying it might not make isolated sense in some alternate rule-universe or other. Punches like that make sense in anime, for example. But it doesn't make narrative sense to anyone picking up the game, looking at the setting, or reading the lore. And I'm bringing that up because the original proposal for ruleset Josh had actually did make narrative sense. But it was thrown out to address the balancing complaints that we allegedly would be getting in droves, once the game would release. As "people" weren't smart enough to understand such a complicated system that just assumed the player was marginally sane, and doesn't actually think in d&d ruleset conventions when they go to the convenience store to buy milk. And yet, here we are, after release, and what do we get? People complain about the balance of the game, in spite of the game being balanced and streamlined down to where it's carefully structured to fit Obsidian's playthrough of the game from minute to minute. Because now you have a grinding, boring slugfest that has no flexibility and forces you to play the game to completion if you want to move on. It's boring, and you get punished with difficulty spikes if you try to skip through some xp-grinding by carelessly assuming that you can in fact move on to the next quest on your list, that was vaguely connected to the one you just completed. Rather than that you actually /have/ to go through the others if you don't want to face enemies twice your level. It's boring, or optionally, just unbalanced. And in any case, it's boring. I told you so. So did others. And I'm sure Obsidian did what they thought was best in this case. When they postponed the release 6 months to give you this amazingly boring rework of the original and interesting proposal. But it reflects on Obsidian as a studio, and it tells me that Obsidian will never make a good game ever again. In spite of being amazingly capable of it. Leave Obsidian alone, you mean. If anything, Obsidian turned out to be dedicated to the insta-opinion of their focus groups, at the cost of their initial design (which was good, but they had no confidence in). That's not what I helped kickstart, and it's not what Obsidian promised in their kickstarter pitch for Pillars.