Random video game news... the critical eyes have it

[Malcador]

15 hours ago, MrBrown said:

Blizzard is just itching for lawsuits, aren't they.

Once again, Asmongold, sorry.  

TL;DR: purchase button that's easy to click by accident, but doesn't have any extra confirmation pop-up.

I'd thought this was to buy it, but seems like it's just to activate what you paid for?  Pretty tame for a scam all said.   

Edited July 23, 2023 by Malcador

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

JS channel update - I don’t think I have seen those posted before:

Pentiment talk on making Pentiment:

more on OEI Tools (Obsidian dialogue thing) for Pentiment (spoilers)

On power gaming in 5e and Baldur’s Gate3:

Hey thanks for posting these, specifically for me the last video on powergaming. I very much agree with everything JES had to say in it. It's a lot of the same critiques I have of DnD systems and how RPGs, including very much BG3, push us towards powergaming rather than roleplaying. I especially loved that he outed DnD for what it truly is: a war game more so than a roleplaying game.

[Keyrock]

Some of my most memorable characters in D&D were very flawed, granted this was p&p D&D where a good DM can (and did) alter things on the fly to make spectacular failure fun and interesting and not a game over screen. I realize that within the limitations of a vidya game it's much more difficult for the devs to account for and make failing interesting.

[Sarex]

55 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

One could say that his views in balance have been.....balanced.

I went down the rabbit hole of his interviews/posts/presentations of what went wrong with Deadfire (PoE). In general he doesn't seem to know what the core issue was. I'm trying to find if he has some impressions about the Owlcat games, but apart from mentioning them he doesn't go in depth. He does touch on Divinity Original sin, but says that it's not a direct competitor/comparison, which I agree with, but I would think that the Pathfinder games are so I was expecting to see more.

48 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Hey thanks for posting these, specifically for me the last video on powergaming. I very much agree with everything JES had to say in it. It's a lot of the same critiques I have of DnD systems and how RPGs, including very much BG3, push us towards powergaming rather than roleplaying. I especially loved that he outed DnD for what it truly is: a war game more so than a roleplaying game.

I mean that is what those games are trying to do and the audience they are trying to cater to. There are other games that do what you want to. Sims being the easiest example.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Sarex

[Keyrock]

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

I went down the rabbit hole of his interviews/posts/presentations of what went wrong with Deadfire (PoE). In general he doesn't seem to know what the core issue was. I'm trying to find if he has some impressions about the Owlcat games, but apart from mentioning them he doesn't go in depth. He does touch on Divinity Original sin, but says that it's not a direct competitor/comparison, which I agree with, but I would think that the Pathfinder games are so I was expecting to see more.

I'm not one for armchair psychoanalysis but I think Josh was both burned out after Deadfire and mostly looked at Deadfire's contemporaries at the time of release for the post-mortem on why it underperformed. There's a good chance he hasn't played either Owlfinder game yet, as his comments are only feeling bad about putting Owlcat on the spot with Deadfire's fully voiced dialogue, so maybe we'll get a video of him mad about merged casters or something.

In general I agree with him, quite a lot of role-playing is reversed engineered from the existing framework of the game and making it work as a character. Even if you do lean more into the role-play than combat (or general gameplay for the games that have it) you're doing this because you can't just drop in as DIO or something into a fantasy game and have it work (well) with the setting. I'd also agree with.....balance regarding options that are an always or never pick option, if the option is that good just make it part of the class (or gameplay or whatever) and if it's bad dump it in the trash. Part of what makes games with character builds interesting is build diversity and every choice should feel like you're making a compromise with something.

[Keyrock]

OpenMW 0.48 released

The most notable addition is shiny new post processing effects.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I'm not one for armchair psychoanalysis but I think Josh was both burned out after Deadfire and mostly looked at Deadfire's contemporaries at the time of release for the post-mortem on why it underperformed. There's a good chance he hasn't played either Owlfinder game yet, as his comments are only feeling bad about putting Owlcat on the spot with Deadfire's fully voiced dialogue, so maybe we'll get a video of him mad about merged casters or something.

From what I gather he actively does PnP sessions, I would think he plays the games too, but who knows...

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

In general I agree with him, quite a lot of role-playing is reversed engineered from the existing framework of the game and making it work as a character. Even if you do lean more into the role-play than combat (or general gameplay for the games that have it) you're doing this because you can't just drop in as DIO or something into a fantasy game and have it work (well) with the setting. I'd also agree with.....balance regarding options that are an always or never pick option, if the option is that good just make it part of the class (or gameplay or whatever) and if it's bad dump it in the trash. Part of what makes games with character builds interesting is build diversity and every choice should feel like you're making a compromise with something.

These games, at least for me, were always more about the gameplay. The story/roleplaying aspect was never particularly great in any of them. I think it's hard to tell a good story when you want to have multiple paths/choices and when you want the game to be that long and as you said, when you want the game to conform the genre/ruleset.

On the topic of balance. I agree that ideally it's great to only have good choices that are all interesting to play, or to at least have one good choice that is interesting to the person playing, but realistically can you think of a game like that? Lets say that is the goal you want to strive for when making a game, how big of a priority should it be? Should it trump everything? Should you tone down interesting skills, to bring them in line with other skills at the cost of making them less interesting. Making a good build is a part of the difficulty of the game, if you don't want that then drop it to story difficulty and pick whatever skill you want.

I think that chasing balance in a single player game is a waste of resources, you are never going to achieve it, people are too good at finding exploits or just things you never thought about. But let's say you do, are you aware that even games that revolve around being balanced, aren't really. From my personal experience of having played League of Legends, that game for all its balance patches was constantly shifting metas and for a couple of reasons. Most people would probably say it's because the devs are incompetent, but that is BS, it's unbalanced because that is what keeps the game interesting and fun. Besides even if they made it balanced, a one trick pony (a person playing only one character all the time) would probably stomp the ladder. Also who do you balance around? A bad player, a good player, or a no lifer?

But back to the topic of a single player game, between a choice of a balanced gameplay and an interesting gameplay I would always chose the latter. I'm saying this because I cannot think of a single player game (of this genre(IE style games)) that was both.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

With singleplayer games, there's a happy medium to be had between balance and fun, and it can hard to get enough of both, particularly when there are so many different (hopefully actually unique) options to choose from. When you're between a rock and a hard place with a fun vs. balance issue, I tend to lean towards fun, because worst case scenario, if the player finds the "fun" option to be unsatisfying because it's too powerful or otherwise unbalanced, the player can always just choose to self-restrict and/or go a different route entirely. How many different beloved games have some kind of class, item, exploit, or whatever else that long-time/hardcore players say is the "noob" way of playing? That's perfectly fine - if it's fun on the first playthrough, then great, and if the player that found it fun on the first playthrough later decides "wait, that really is actually too powerful, I'm going to do something else" for a second playthrough, then all is right in the world. It seems so much wiser to focus your energies on trying to get what's currently bad/unfun to be better instead.

And of course these kinds of games devolve into mainly focusing on the gameplay (and possibly scumming thereof): these are typically very long games and most of the player's time is taken up by the gameplay. If you want players to focus more strongly on "roleplaying" and dialogue/characters/story/world, well...you probably need to be a different kind of game that takes up much more of the player's time with them, because those things haven't historically translated all that seriously into these overly scripted/railroaded CRPG video games that force the player down just one or two paths with little to no room for arugment. Frankly, it's very difficult to truly capture the experience of a tabletop adventure campaign where almost anything can happen, where most of the fun comes from the combined imaginations of the players and their DM constructing a world, characters, and a story together all by themselves while taking it to just where they want to go with it, so it's really no wonder that "roleplaying" must necessarily take a backseat.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Exactly, I am not saying you shouldn't balance, but it should never be the highest priority or the guiding light you follow.

[MrBrown]

https://www.pcgamer.com/your-ubisoft-account-can-be-suspended-and-subsequently-permanently-deleted-for-inactivity-taking-your-games-library-with-it/

[Sarex]

Not true, only accounts with no bought games.

[Wormerine]

6 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I especially loved that he outed DnD for what it truly is: a war game more so than a roleplaying game.

I don’t think he outed it - just pointed to DND origins and how it’s original designs trickle down in player behaviours to this day. While I never played tabletop DND I can imagine how it could work better in tabletop setting - if players make wacky, poorly functioning character DM can design with that in mind. I think the challenge (and fear) of cRPGs is that devs design single content that have to satisfy all players. 
I think what speaks to me is Josh point about not trusting dev about content being balanced around my flaws build - what IF the game locks me off a compelling path or boss because I didn’t  min-max hard enough? One would think difficulty settings would cover that, giving various type of players different experiences but it is rarely as simple as that. Even so - how poorly optimised character is good enough for normal? JS discussed this issue in his post about balance in cRPGs.

5 hours ago, Sarex said:

I went down the rabbit hole of his interviews/posts/presentations of what went wrong with Deadfire (PoE). In general he doesn't seem to know what the core issue was. I'm trying to find if he has some impressions about the Owlcat games, but apart from mentioning them he doesn't go in depth.

Is there a core issue to be discovered? It wasn’t true than, but now the game is profitable, and in general is liked, in spite of some of its issues. If I remember well he lists changes they made from PoE1=>PoE2, their thought process behind them, and if they turned out good or bad.

Is there any interesting take on Owlcat games that can be had? Those are combat focused games, where ridiculous amount of options and complexity of the system, and often gruelling unfair difficulty makes for a heaven for min-maxers, and not much else. 
I think JS focused on Divinities because they also were new cRPG IPs using bespoke system. Pathfinders, being a licensed tabletop system and IP, works a bit differently. While being different games, with relatively small audience overlap, they were in a more similar position, than adaptation of existing popular TT properties. 

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Not true, only accounts with no bought games.

It is technically true: as in the article Ubisoft can delete your account for basically any reason they want at any time*.

Crap article though, because so can Valve or anyone else. Indeed, as below they may be required to do so.

*seen people say that Ubi has to delete inactive accounts with no games after a while due to GDPR, and that certainly seems legit since GDPR data retention policy does legally require eventual deletion.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Sarex]

54 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Is there a core issue to be discovered? It wasn’t true than, but now the game is profitable, and in general is liked, in spite of some of its issues. If I remember well he lists changes they made from PoE1=>PoE2, their thought process behind them, and if they turned out good or bad.

That is a fair question, but I don't think Obs can exactly wait years for profits. Comparatively to other games, or their sequels, Deadfire was a miss. They were expecting to sell more, not less, so obviously there is an issue for them to identify.

54 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Is there any interesting take on Owlcat games that can be had? Those are combat focused games, where ridiculous amount of options and complexity of the system, and often gruelling unfair difficulty makes for a heaven for min-maxers, and not much else. 
I think JS focused on Divinities because they also were new cRPG IPs using bespoke system. Pathfinders, being a licensed tabletop system and IP, works a bit differently. While being different games, with relatively small audience overlap, they were in a more similar position, than adaptation of existing popular TT properties.

I mean any take he has on it would be interesting, at least to me, hence why I was searching for it. I think he was focusing on DOS because at the time it was the closest successful example that was comparable and it had a sequel which was a major success. As for the rest I would say that is your take, unless you are JS under an alias (although my money is on Gromnir).

Edited July 23, 2023 by Sarex

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

As for the rest I would say that is your take,

It is. Never intended for it to be taken as anything more.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

7 hours ago, Sarex said:

From what I gather he actively does PnP sessions, I would think he plays the games too, but who knows...

We'll probably never know until he publishes a video on why Cameilla did nothing wrong.

7 hours ago, Sarex said:

These games, at least for me, were always more about the gameplay. The story/roleplaying aspect was never particularly great in any of them. I think it's hard to tell a good story when you want to have multiple paths/choices and when you want the game to be that long and as you said, when you want the game to conform the genre/ruleset.

On the topic of balance. I agree that ideally it's great to only have good choices that are all interesting to play, or to at least have one good choice that is interesting to the person playing, but realistically can you think of a game like that? Lets say that is the goal you want to strive for when making a game, how big of a priority should it be? Should it trump everything? Should you tone down interesting skills, to bring them in line with other skills at the cost of making them less interesting. Making a good build is a part of the difficulty of the game, if you don't want that then drop it to story difficulty and pick whatever skill you want.

I think that chasing balance in a single player game is a waste of resources, you are never going to achieve it, people are too good at finding exploits or just things you never thought about. But let's say you do, are you aware that even games that revolve around being balanced, aren't really. From my personal experience of having played League of Legends, that game for all its balance patches was constantly shifting metas and for a couple of reasons. Most people would probably say it's because the devs are incompetent, but that is BS, it's unbalanced because that is what keeps the game interesting and fun. Besides even if they made it balanced, a one trick pony (a person playing only one character all the time) would probably stomp the ladder. Also who do you balance around? A bad player, a good player, or a no lifer?

But back to the topic of a single player game, between a choice of a balanced gameplay and an interesting gameplay I would always chose the latter. I'm saying this because I cannot think of a single player game (of this genre(IE style games)) that was both.

I also am more of a gameplay guy, at least for vidya, with pnp role-playing is often the gameplay. But I do think it's worth acknowledging that people look for something else than me in these games, even if I don't think it's that great in those games.

Now time for balance. I don't think we're going to see a game with only good choices without substantial work, at the same time I don't think it's impossible (or even hard) to cut out the worst offenders in some way, like removing/buffing the bottom trash tier choices that are virtually always a mistake and making the s-tier/always picked options folded into the character or class by default. That would improve build variety and make more interesting stuff happen by putting in more choice. Exploits are always going to exist and we're very unlikely to see anything perfectly balanced, but I don't think it's a bad thing to at least try to make sure that the choices a player make can be competitive.

I'd always take more interesting gameplay over balance, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. After playing Pathfinder 2e pnp, which took a cap balance approach by establishing clear ceilings on the numbers, I found myself enjoying that approach because tactics became a lot more important. Build is still important (and I'd argue much more interesting than 1e), but it becomes more along the lines of building around what you're going to do than trying to push your numbers into the stratosphere.

[Mamoulian War]

7 hours ago, Sarex said:

Not true, only accounts with no bought games.

It already happened though

https://www.techspot.com/news/92761-ubisoft-connect-user-account-deleted-inactivity-comply-gdpr.html

[Hawke64]

I think, PoE is closer to PF, considering its single-player and story-focused approach (though, with more combat*), D:OS was more on the multiplayer sandbox side with awful stylistic coherence (gore + humour; but the narrative was backed up by the MP/competitive aspect). So, the full VA, while it was high-quality, was a pointless resource sink. Owlcat seems to know that their target audience does not need the full VA, while Larian is currently going for more "cinematic" games. Neither is inherently bad, but they are different.

*PF still was offering more roleplay than D:OS, despite the amount of combat and the additional systems. E.g. the Trickster route was different from the Angel one in both mechanics and specific story content.

 

4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

It already happened though

https://www.techspot.com/news/92761-ubisoft-connect-user-account-deleted-inactivity-comply-gdpr.html

I guess, it is good that Ubisoft keeps reminding me to avoid their products. Also, I am curious how it aligns with the customer protection laws in the EU - removing time-unrestricted licences cannot be legal.

[Sarex]

6 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

We'll probably never know until he publishes a video on why Cameilla did nothing wrong.

6 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I also am more of a gameplay guy, at least for vidya, with pnp role-playing is often the gameplay. But I do think it's worth acknowledging that people look for something else than me in these games, even if I don't think it's that great in those games.

Now time for balance. I don't think we're going to see a game with only good choices without substantial work, at the same time I don't think it's impossible (or even hard) to cut out the worst offenders in some way, like removing/buffing the bottom trash tier choices that are virtually always a mistake and making the s-tier/always picked options folded into the character or class by default. That would improve build variety and make more interesting stuff happen by putting in more choice. Exploits are always going to exist and we're very unlikely to see anything perfectly balanced, but I don't think it's a bad thing to at least try to make sure that the choices a player make can be competitive.

I'd always take more interesting gameplay over balance, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. After playing Pathfinder 2e pnp, which took a cap balance approach by establishing clear ceilings on the numbers, I found myself enjoying that approach because tactics became a lot more important. Build is still important (and I'd argue much more interesting than 1e), but it becomes more along the lines of building around what you're going to do than trying to push your numbers into the stratosphere.

I agree the obvious trash stuff that is not even interesting should have been scrapped, that is why I said that they should have downscoped WotR and focused more on polish. Although I imagine they already cut a lot of things out that were probably even worse. This is the downfall of wanting to make the biggest game possible.

[bugarup]

14 hours ago, Sarex said:

But back to the topic of a single player game, between a choice of a balanced gameplay and an interesting gameplay I would always chose the latter. I'm saying this because I cannot think of a single player game (of this genre(IE style games)) that was both.

One man's balance is another's idea of fun. I personally found PoE and especially Deadfire way, way more fun to play than that double-cheese deluxe aka Wrathfinder. It means I can get creative within given set of rules and experience this wondrous, liberating thing of playing with any possible class combination instead of "take loremaster for spellcasting gouda, take a level in monk for camembert style, (alignment? **** that, you can change it later anyway); rogue? Don't be stupid, play a vivisectionist, oh and did I mention fondue monk dip? () you totally should take that" etc. 

To each their own of course, but my fingers crossed for Sawyer not taking parmesan bites from Owlcat's charcuterie.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, bugarup said:

One man's balance is another's idea of fun. I personally found PoE and especially Deadfire way, way more fun to play than that double-cheese deluxe aka Wrathfinder. It means I can get creative within given set of rules and experience this wondrous, liberating thing of playing with any possible class combination instead of "take loremaster for spellcasting gouda, take a level in monk for camembert style, (alignment? **** that, you can change it later anyway); rogue? Don't be stupid, play a vivisectionist, oh and did I mention fondue monk dip? () you totally should take that" etc. 

To each their own of course, but my fingers crossed for Sawyer not taking parmesan bites from Owlcat's charcuterie.

I never said otherwise. I am aware that people like the PoE games and have absolutely nothing against that, but obviously not enough people liked the game.

On the topic of Pathfinder, as @Bartimaeus said, you don't have to cheese it. It's a single player game you can do what you want. I personally, as far as I remember, never exploited/cheesed the PF games. I never dipped in to another class (multiclassed), I played a vanilla Paladin and had no issues on Core difficulty, even found it a bit too easy overall. Now that is my personal experience and I have seen multiple people on this forum complain about it, but that is why you can always drop the difficulty.

Besides the point, it was discussed multiple times that PoE wasn't particularly balanced either and that there were clear outlier classes.

[InsaneCommander]

It seems the final release of BG3 won't include party formations and your leading character, the one who does all the dialogues, will also be the one leading the group into combat. Why? The first D:OS had a formation button, iirc. Couldn't they at least force the player's character to do the dialogues?

[Malcador]

[xzar_monty]

On 7/23/2023 at 10:17 PM, Sarex said:

Exactly, I am not saying you shouldn't balance, but it should never be the highest priority or the guiding light you follow.

In my view, Obsidian's excessive emphasis on "balance" in Poe and Deadfire is best exemplified by the fact that there's essentially no treasure or loot that makes you go "Wow!". Now, I don't know about everybody, but I would still sort of claim that this kind of thing is a big draw for a lot of people: it just feels good, for an adventurer, to find something that really helps you on your way. And yes, I understand the pitfalls of overpowered items or even items-that-are-so-much-better-than-the-rest-that-everybody-basically-regards-them-as-necessary. But still.

Remember the pirate map in Deadfire? The one that you had to assemble from maybe four or five pieces collected from various foes in the game? That was a brilliant example of a letdown created by excessive emphasis on "balance". Because once you finally had that map and went to the location it described, you found... nothing that was worth squat.

Edited July 24, 2023 by xzar_monty