Josh Sawyer: PoE2's ship system was half-assed and Feargus made me add it

[Infinitron]

https://badgame.net/index.php?topic=53254.msg13507024#msg13507024

 

naval battles were included in deadfire at the insistence of feargus.

i didn't design the initial system and had cut it around the time of the fig campaign because i thought it was going to be unappealing to a lot of our players even with a lot of work.  feargus brought it back as a stretch goal feature.  another designer redesigned it, it still had problems, and i took it over for the rest of development.  there was not time to implement a fundamentally different system, which is why i cut the feature to begin with.

no one should feel bad for complaining about it.  if you don't like it, you don't like it.

 

i'm sure there are other things that we could have done with ship to ship combat if we had addressed it earlier in the project or had more resources dedicated to it, but it was a very large system that no one really had time for, including me.  it was cut/brought back at a difficult stage of its implementation, because all of the building blocks for the system were there.  designing and implementing a fundamentally different system almost certainly would have produced a better experience, but no one really had time to conceive a new system, design new interfaces, create the interfaces based on the new spec, etc.

 

i feel bad that people didn't enjoy it and it wasn't my intention to aggravate people or design the system in a spiteful way.   my choices, as i saw them, were to design a completely new system that i didn't believe we had resources for, or to continue iterating on the existing system knowing that it would be a big turn off for a non-trivial number of players.  i didn't really have time to oversee either, unfortunately.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Infinitron

[gloomseeker]

I'm not saying the ship system is any good but it would have been pretty bad if there was none in a game where you're meant to be spending quite some time travelling on the sea and exploring islands.

[M4xw0lf]

I feel the title is needlessly clickbaity.

[xzar_monty]

It is not quite ok legally, either. It gives an impression that Sawyer said something, but the quotes below clearly show he didn't. If I were the OP, I wouldn't do that.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

ye, ship combat similar beast to hacking system in game like 'prey'. it didnt have to be good, it just had to be there and frictionless enough, which it was imo. i enjoyed wasting my time with it.

 

can understand sawyers reservations. i get sense hes the type of dude who wants to do a really good job or no job. feargus made call that something had to be there to complete jigsaw even if not perfect.

 

i guess production of any game is series of contentious decisions like so. dont really see much scandal here, just process.

[Boeroer]

You can edit your thread title with [Edit]-->go to the bottom of the textarea input field-->[use Full Editor]:

 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Boeroer

[uuuhhii]

just add a option to skip ship combat entirely go straight to boarding fight will be enough

[Boeroer]

There is.

[Takkik]

Ship system/combat feel like poe1 stronghold, not really great system just put in but not really well integrated. Really repetitive. Always felt strange to me that when you have casters that can summon dragons, cast meteor storm, lightning storm, control wind etc... people still fight only with canons. As anthi magic shield weapon (like the guns) it make sens, but where is the magic/fantasy?

 

Big regret : they could have dedicated a DLC/expansion to redesign it (and exploration in general, I never got the feeling to be an explorator). The dlc are nice, but the 'open world' design of the game coulmd have allowed them to expand existing system, refine what wasn't great at release.

[Boeroer]

One in-game explanation could be that the range of all spells is too short to be useful in ship-to-ship fights.

[house2fly]

I feel the title is needlessly clickbaity.

Yeah, it's weird. At no point did he suggest it was actually half-assed so the title is misleading, and this isn't a Kotaku article it's a forum thread.

 

Anyway, imo the ship combat isn't thrilling but it's inoffensive and adds an extra dimension to sailing that the game would probably feel a little weird without. It's not less fun than, say, scanning planets in Mass Effect 2(or, yeah, the hacking in games like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol). Probably for the best that Feargus pushed for it

Edited December 13, 2018 by house2fly

[Flouride]

Clickbaiting much Infinitron?

[thelee]

 

I feel the title is needlessly clickbaity.

Yeah, it's weird. At no point did he suggest it was actually half-assed so the title is misleading, and this isn't a Kotaku article it's a forum thread.

 

I don't know, the quotes definitely read to me like it was half-assed.

 

There's two possible meanings here: JE Sawyer put half-assed effort into it, or the system itself is half-assed (essentially: half-baked). I don't think the first is justfied, but the second is definitely justified by the quotes.

 

That being said, while ship combat isn't great and has its problems, I also certainly don't think it's actively bad - i think the main problem is that it's strongly wanting in tactics and there's a lot of RNG and murkiness to it (read: what the hell do deckhands actually do?), but as a way to realize the strategic payoff of investing in your ship, it's a fun minor diversion.

 

But if they had the resources to do a major content patch (though from the Forgotten Sanctum twitch streams doesn't sound like they do post-4.0) investing in ship combat would be a wise choice IMO.

Edited December 13, 2018 by thelee

[Hardtarget24]

title seems accurate to me

[xzar_monty]

 

 

I feel the title is needlessly clickbaity.

Yeah, it's weird. At no point did he suggest it was actually half-assed so the title is misleading, and this isn't a Kotaku article it's a forum thread.

 

There's two possible meanings here: JE Sawyer put half-assed effort into it, or the system itself is half-assed (essentially: half-baked). I don't think the first is justfied, but the second is definitely justified by the quotes.

 

But the OP is putting terminology in JE Sawyer's mouth, which is a definite no-no. You don't do that, especially if you want to avoid lawsuits (I'm not saying there's going to be a lawsuit here). What makes the OP's posting doubly unfortunate is that he's putting less than proper terminology ("half-assed") in JE Sawyer's mouth. You definitely don't do that.

 

Now, JE Sawyer may, in fact, agree with the OP. However, the OP is not qualified to make that statement for him.

[bringingyouthefuture]

Nah - it seems more like he wasn't thrilled for it, but the other guy thought the game needed it, good call from the execs really, and Josh really for not wasting resources.  I like ship combat I think it was pretty fun the first 20 or so times I played it - it would be bad not to have ship combat - and any other type of ship combat would be just as cheesy.  You could argue they could of made a simulator but I mean its an rpg ... if I wanted a ship simulator I would buy a ship simulator.

 

And on the other hand- I have played entire pirate games where ship combat is just as formulaic, with even more options to move, shoot, wind, etc, but still just as formulaic - problem is its a video game, once you learn how to "game" a game it is boring.  This might be a little easier to game than others but all in all I enjoyed.

 

Funny thing is the headline reads like a New York Post or Huffpost headline lol.

 

edit: someone beat me too the rebuttal!

Edited December 13, 2018 by bringingyouthefuture

[thelee]

Funny thing is the headline reads like a New York Post or Huffpost headline lol.

 

"See what JE Sawyer thinks about Deadfire ship combat! Fearguses hate this one weird trick!"

[Gfted1]

All of these lawyers! Click the link and make your own determination. Thread closed.