Sawyerism Distilled - an interview with Josh Sawyer at Iron Tower Studio

[Infinitron]

Vault Dweller does the best interviews. Don't forget to vote for Age of Decadence.

 

http://www.irontower...pic,3114.0.html

 

1. Let's skip traditional KS questions like "Did you really think it will get funded? What are you going to do with all this money?" and jump straight to game-making business.

 

So, a brand new world... What are elves and dwarves doing there? Mind you, I'm not against "encompassing the recognizable", I'm merely curious what your reasons were. Is it a Baldur's Gate thing?

 

A large number of players like to play familiar races. Of the common fantasy RPG races, dwarves and elves are the two that players gravitate toward most often. Also, because we stated we were making a game inspired by the Infinity Engine games and, implicitly, the Forgotten Realms setting used in most of them, it seemed appropriate.

 

We're going to have subrace offshoots that are slightly less traditional (like the "boreal" dwarves that people have already seen) as well as increasingly unusual races like orlans, aumaua, and godlike, but if you want to play a fair-haired bow-twanging elf or an axe-swinging bearded dwarf, we've got it covered.

 

2. As a follow up question, when it comes to recognizable and familiar vs strange and bizarre, how far is too far? Do you find that the players in general are more comfortable with the familiar? How willing are they to take their time to figure out something truly different?

 

People in general are more comfortable with the familiar, but players vary a great deal. Some players react extremely negatively if any aspect of the setting or mechanics in the game is unusual or unorthodox. Some players are of the opinion that if something's been done before, they're not interested in seeing it done again. There are also single-issue gamers. I've seen gamers who aren't interested in an RPG unless there are dwarves in it and I've seen gamers who write off an RPG if there are firearms in it. Above all else, many RPG fans are passionate, so if you push their buttons, there's a good chance the response will be strong.

 

I also think that gamers often trip over the same logical and emotional hurdles that anyone does. If they've used something before and liked the experience, it can be hard for them to see the flaws in that experience. Similarly, if they don't like the ideas they formulate about how something is going to work, they can have difficulty revising their views even after it's been explained to work contrary to their assumptions.

 

3. So, a brand new world, with elves, dwarves, the godlike and the odd, as well as souls and firearms. How do the firearms fit in there from the design perspective?

 

I think early firearms are interesting and I've enjoyed reading about their use in late Medieval and early modern Europe. From a gameplay perspective, they pack more of a punch than bows and crossbows, but they have worse accuracy and take much longer to reload. They're also particularly good at penetrating wizards' arcane veils, which are commonly used for defense. In our setting, I believe the presence of firearms helps shift the feeling of the world away from the equivalent of Earth's High Middle Ages and into the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. Europe's early modern period was a time of domestic social unrest and extensive exploration by imperial powers. I think those topics aren't explored a lot in fantasy RPGs (Maztica [RIP] being a notable exception) and the presence of firearms helps give the feeling of that age.

 

4. Speaking of arcane veils and such, one of the most praised features in BG2 was the mage duels. In BG a wizard was an annoying pest lurking behind fighters and waiting to be shot full of arrows. In BG a wizard was an impregnable juggernaut, capable of wiping out your entire party, if it was caught unprepared. What should we expect in Project Eternity?

 

Personally, I believe AD&D elevated the "glass cannon" conception of wizards to an un-fun place. It's cool that, especially in 2nd Edition, wizards had so many spells to use, but in Baldur's Gate II, I believe it resulted in more-or-less strict combat puzzles rather than loose combat puzzles or tactical challenges. If the only viable way through a fight is to use a specific sequence of spells, that's not something that you tactically opt to do -- it's the thing you must do to move forward. And in many of those fights, the only way to figure out what spells to use is to trigger the fight, get wiped, reload, and try again.

 

I think we can still have powerful, high-threat wizards in Project Eternity without using rock-paper-scissors defense and counter mechanics. I'd like to present players with challenges that make them think of a variety of solutions. I want them to feel like they can be flexible and adaptive when an unforeseen challenge appears. If the game comes out and I see walkthroughs that all suggest the exact same tactics for going through a tough fight, I believe that's a failure on my part.

 

5. Stamina, health, and regeneration. A lot has been speculated on the topic, so would you mind clarifying it? What are the advantages of a "dual-bar" system? What does it do that a single-bar system can't? What role does stamina regeneration play?

 

The "dual-bar" or two resource system allows the player to have separate tactical and strategic resources for their characters' survivability in combat. In most versions of A/D&D, you have hit points that determine how much damage a character can take before he or she can no longer perform actions in combat. If you're playing in a more forgiving edition, you also have "Death's Door" rules that allow the character to dip into negative hit point values without being killed outright.

 

Many A/D&D adventures have an expectation of periodic healing, so if your party members have a rough fight, the party cleric, druid, or maybe paladin has to spend resources to make you viable for the next fight. This leads to the "healing battery" expectation, where someone in the party has to devote strategic resources to healing between fights -- or you're stuck walking back to a resting location with high frequency. Neither of those options are particularly enjoyable for many players.

 

With Stamina and Health, Stamina represents short term damage (shock, impact trauma, initial pain) and Health represents "the bad stuff" (burns, cuts, bruised ribs, etc.). When you take damage, you lose Stamina, but you also lose Health at a fixed ratio to the amount of Stamina damage you took. Currently it's at 1:4 Health:Stamina. When you run out of Stamina, your character gets knocked out, just like hitting 0 hit points in most editions of A/D&D. You're effectively out of the fight and you're not going to get back up without outside assistance.

 

If you're conscious, Stamina will regenerate quickly. "How quickly, Josh?" I don't know, man, but... pretty fast. It's the thing you're most likely to run out of in combat, but you'll probably get most or all of it back before you start another fight. You can also recover Stamina through the use of spells or class abilities, so it's something you can choose to tactically manage in combat. Between fights, it's really not an issue. No one has to cast ten healing spells in a row to get characters back into fighting shape because the Stamina will return in short order.

 

Health damage doesn't regenerate and you can't get it back with magic. You have to rest to recover Health. If your Health hits zero, you'll either enter some form of maimed/critically injured (and unconscious) state or, optionally (and all the time in Expert mode), be killed outright. If you explore far away from rest locations and keep getting your faces pounded in, you can have characters with very low Health and high Stamina. That's a dangerous circumstance to be in because even one or two blows could lead to a character being maimed or killed.

 

Ultimately, the mechanics are present to allow "hit points" and unconsciousness to be a real threat in individual combats without necessitating the presence of a healer or resting to allow for more exploration.

 

6. What are your thoughts on combat difficulty? Where is the line between challenging and frustrating? Would we have to download "Sawyer's Hardcore Mod!" separately (btw, loved the mod, great work) to enjoy Project Eternity properly or would it be a challenging experience "out of the box"?

 

Thanks. You should not need to download a separate mod for a challenge, but there will be a pretty big gulf between playing on standard difficulty without Expert and playing on higher difficulty with Expert (not to mention the other two challenge modes). My opinion on challenge is that accomplishments you achieve without some measure of frustration often feel unfulfilling, but every player has his or her own comfort zone for frustration. Some players only feel satisfied if the frustration level is high and the game is kicking them in the virtual groin. Other players really don't deal well with adversity and would rather overcome conflicts with minimal resistance.

 

I do think it's worth saying that tactical combat is a core part of the game, as it was for almost all of the Infinity Engine games. If someone simply doesn't like combat, Project Eternity may not be the game for them. There are ways to avoid combat or gain a distinct advantage in combat, but a good chunk of the game is built around it.

 

7. Tim Cain said that "Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills. You shouldn't have to choose between Magic Missile and Herbalism." May I ask why?

 

Everyone in a party contributes to the party's overall combat efficacy and failure in a combat challenge is a game-ending (or at least reloading-invoking) event. With combat, you can fail or succeed by degrees. Failure in a non-combat challenge is usually not in degrees, but in absolutes, and there's not much (if any) tactical decision-making that can change the outcome. Additionally, combat is always a way through areas. While we are going to give players many different ways to navigate areas and resolve conflicts, combat will be a common means of moving forward.

 

Because combat will usually be more dominant than any single other means of conflict resolution, and because every character contributes to party combat efficacy, increasing an individual character's combat capability is always a strategically sound decision (assuming you aren't metagaming every non-combat challenge). The thing is, we want people to use non-combat skills to navigate through the environment and solve problems, so we want characters to have those skills! Dividing combat and non-combat skills into separate resources allows parties to be good in and out of combat, but a party still will not be able to cover all "bases". The system we're making doesn't assume that you have maximum combat capabilities and are buying skills like a 3E rogue with an 18 Intelligence.

 

8. Chris Avellone mentioned several times that the player will be able to avoid some combat encounters with non-combat skills. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that Project Eternity will be a combat-heavy game (like Baldur's Gate was) with combat oriented classes. Why would a combat party want to avoid combat? How are you going to balance the loss of experience, content, and loot?

 

Yes, Project Eternity will have a lot of combat (though probably not as much as Icewind Dale II!) and the classes are all "battle ready". Players can avoid or stall combat either to gain an advantage or to stretch their resources between safe resting locations. Some players may simply not want to fight certain enemies or they might want to peacefully resolve a conflict.

 

Tim and I would both like to use an experience system that relies heavily (if not wholly) on quest, objective (i.e. steps within a quest), and challenge (e.g. exploration rewards) rewards. We want to encourage players to solve problems by whatever means are at their disposal. Combat is a very common solution, but that shouldn't be the only solution. If our experience system discourages the use of alternate resolution mechanics, it's at odds with that goal.

 

As far as loot goes, I don't want to rely heavily on putting all of the best gear on enemies. Again, that would conflict with the goal of allowing the player to resolve problems in the way that they would like to.

 

9. Which speech/conversation skills and ability are planned or being discussed and why? Are there any spells that can grant you new dialogue-related abilities like PST's speak with the dead ability?

 

We haven't discussed conversation skills as much as reputation mechanics. To me, conversation is one of the primary means players have of defining the type of person they are playing in the world. Instead of a heavy emphasis on conversation skills, I would rather allow players to behave in a variety of ways and develop robust reputation systems to react to those choices throughout the game. I think it's more interesting to allow a person to select diplomatic responses and develop a reputation for being a diplomat than to level up a Diplomacy skill and pick the Diplomacy option when it's unlocked for you.

 

I think some of the best role-playing experiences come from expressing your character's personality in the way that you want and seeing how the world reacts to it. I believe that we can make a conversation system that allows people to do this with dialogues and characters in a natural way.

 

10. Chris mentioned that you "want to explore the idea of speech as a tool not as a key", citing "intimidating, flattering, pissing people off" as examples and "providing a broader context or more information on the target" as the goals/rewards. While it worked well in Planescape: Torment, it does sound like you're marginalizing the speech skills, going from one extreme (a win button) to another (mostly flavor). Any thoughts on that?

 

I'd like to marginalize the speech skills into the dust bin, personally. I think the player's conversation choices should be important without dead-ending quests and I think that Alpha Protocol managed to find ways to do that. There are certainly optimal choices for the player to make if you want a certain type of outcome (e.g. impressing one character instead of another), but dialogue isn't a right/wrong puzzle.

 

I don't think it's correct to say that I want dialogue choices to be flavor only. I want the player's choices from node to node to actually be more mechanically significant that they have been in most RPGs. That consists of two parts: the immediate reaction within the conversation and the long-term effects of how that choice feeds into your reputation. Sometimes the short-term effects are minor, but the reputation system won't "forget" what you've done.

[Tsuga C]

So very, very glad that I backed this one. Take your time, Obsidian. It's ready when it's ready and slow cookin' makes for the tastiest meals...

[Tamerlane]

Fantastic interview. I'd gleaned a lot of this from kickstarter updates, formspring answers, etc., but it's great to have things more... solidified.

 

The answer to number nine is new to me, though, and that's my absolute favourite. "I'm great at talking but terrible at lying" always felt silly to me, so the more they can move away from "you have a lot of points in this conversation skill so you can use this conversation option" and go towards "here are a bunch of dialogue choices, follow the one that best fits your character", the better.

 

So long as "gain a reputation as a diplomat" doesn't follow along the lines of Mass Effect's terrible Paragon/Renegade systems, of course. But I trust Obsidian wouldn't do that.

 

Because that was terrible.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Tamerlane

[Gorth]

I've seen gamers who aren't interested in an RPG unless there are dwarves in it

 

Strange he didn't mention Volourn by name

[eimatshya]

Interesting read; it's always neat to get more insight into the devs' thought processes. Thanks for posting.

[Odglok]

Wow, good stuff! I'm pleasantly surprised to say that I found every one of these answers agreeable and encouraging! Love the way you guys are thinking.

[rjshae]

People in general are more comfortable with the familiar, but players vary a great deal. Some players react extremely negatively if any aspect of the setting or mechanics in the game is unusual or unorthodox. Some players are of the opinion that if something's been done before, they're not interested in seeing it done again. There are also single-issue gamers. I've seen gamers who aren't interested in an RPG unless there are dwarves in it and I've seen gamers who write off an RPG if there are firearms in it. Above all else, many RPG fans are passionate, so if you push their buttons, there's a good chance the response will be strong.

 

I also think that gamers often trip over the same logical and emotional hurdles that anyone does. If they've used something before and liked the experience, it can be hard for them to see the flaws in that experience. Similarly, if they don't like the ideas they formulate about how something is going to work, they can have difficulty revising their views even after it's been explained to work contrary to their assumptions.

 

Ain't that the truth, though. Gamers are the biggest bunch of whiners on the planet. Kidding... sort of.

Edited December 6, 2012 by rjshae

[Doppelschwert]

I propably should leave the forum for some time, I'm in danger of being exposed to too much awesome news around here...

 

Can't wait to see how those ideas play out

[Ieo]

This is what I really like to see: High-level, big-picture thinking about the player experience.

 

Josh is right--all too often, when looking at a product (game) development in relation/opposition to players, the players themselves come in with such biases that blind them to larger cohesive thinking such as multiple mechanics working in tandem, the flaws of old nostalgia, and so forth. Ah well. I like all of the proposed mechanics so far because I understand the reasoning behind them and know they're WIP anyway.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

thanks for the interview, it was interesting and pending they take time to polish this thing, it may turn out to be one of my fav games.

[Malekith]

I like all the things Sawyer says individually,but his whole approach feels too...gamey, i don't know...overly balanced. While this can be a good thing,it can also make the game feel souless and artificial. Hopefully Obsidian's excelent writing can offset this

[Ieo]

I like all the things Sawyer says individually,but his whole approach feels too...gamey, i don't know...overly balanced. While this can be a good thing,it can also make the game feel souless and artificial. Hopefully Obsidian's excelent writing can offset this

 

I disagree. The fact is, historically players have never had such insight into the game development process at all; it's traditionally very black box. I have no doubt mechanics discussions at the high level went on in the background for all other games as well. Think about the original IE series--they're famous for interpreting the AD&D tabletop ruleset into CRPG terms.

 

Game balance, class balance, player progression tables--certainly in good games, these must all receive critical attention whether they end up perfect or not. We just don't hear about how they do it otherwise. When a final product comes together, the coding is executed so quickly and combat is so engaging and story and character all so immersive that we don't think about such things. At least, that's ideally how it pans out.

[rjshae]

I found his views on spoken skills interesting. His perspective does make a certain amount of sense; i.e. leaving the response choice up to the player rather than using skill levels as a trigger for particular answers. However, there are certainly big differences in people's verbal skill levels in RL. Allowing an otherwise boorish, stupid character to make a slick, diplomatic response may seem incongruous. I guess we'll have to see how it plays out in the game. As long as the conversations are not too linear (as in, say, DS2) or the decisions too black and white, it should be entertaining.

Edited December 6, 2012 by rjshae

[Hormalakh]

Overall a very solid interview that made me much more excited about this project. I've never played Josh's games but I've been reading his interviews -like this one- and with him and Tim Cain at the helm, I'm pretty confident this game will turn out pretty good.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I believe the most skillfully executed designs in any medium appear effortless and natural. In reality, it typically takes an enormous amount of time, effort, and iteration to reach that point. It is extraordinarily uncommon for good design to arrive from a single, artful stroke of the pen, though the best designs will appear to have been made in that way.

[Hormalakh]

One concern I have is whether dialogue and action will work together in determining things like reputation. You could say you'd like to save all the orphans from the orphanage to the mayor, but actually going about doing it should be more impressive.

 

Similarly, people should be "rewarded" with acting on the things they say. If my player threatens someone, and then acts on it, even that should instill some amount of respect to those around him.

 

Actions speak louder than words and all that...

[Karkarov]

Actions speak louder than words and all that...

Eh maybe. Talk is cheap as they say, you should be based on your actions in and of themselves for the most part. Talk is just a very easy low risk form of action after all. If you say "I will save the orphans!" then do it, well that really shouldn't factor in. If you say "I will save the orhpans!" then you fail, or worse, purposefully botch it then if anything your reputation loss should be worse. But if they don't bake that in through some means I will live. The "Planscape" method was considerably too specific. We don't need five different versions of "Yes I will do it."

Edited December 6, 2012 by Karkarov

[Ieo]

Actions speak louder than words and all that...

Eh maybe. Talk is cheap as they say, you should be based on your actions in and of themselves for the most part. Talk is just a very easy low risk form of action after all. If you say "I will save the orphans!" then do it, well that really shouldn't factor in. If you say "I will save the orhpans!" then you fail, or worse, purposefully botch it then if anything your reputation loss should be worse. But if they don't bake that in through some means I will live. The "Planscape" method was considerably too specific. We don't need five different versions of "Yes I will do it."

 

There's the basic speech->action model of interaction and then there's persuasive rhetoric.

 

Actions don't always speak louder than words, especially when thinking about higher-order, very complex social interactions where either action or speech can influence multiple things.

 

For example. There is a leader of a clan set to execute a "criminal" (by their laws), whom you wish to save. However, maybe you also want to remain on the leader's good side for other reasons. You could slaughter the entire clan to achieve that end, but it would break your other goals/desires. You could break the criminal out of jail and risk antagonizing the clan and be banished, but perhaps that way there wouldn't be death, but you'd lose all faction reputation. You can try convincing the guard to do something. You can try to persuade the leader. Bargain. That sort of thing.

 

I wouldn't say talk is always "low risk"--you can easily set off a war just by saying the wrong things.

[Karkarov]

I wouldn't say talk is always "low risk"--you can easily set off a war just by saying the wrong things.

Right but all that boils down to "action". Making an impassioned speech to the leader of a faction whom you are good friends with relies on a number of things but most important is... the fact that you are already friends. Meaning this diplomacy you are using is only possible BECAUSE of previous actions you took. Also it is still very low risk, worst case scenario he says "Nope." Why would that then reasonably stop you from bribing the guard, going for a jail break, paying someone else to effect the jail break, or just brute force killing your way to the guys freedom? It wouldn't. It is just now you probably look more suspicious if the prisoner does end up breaking out.

[Dream]

The "dual-bar" or two resource system allows the player to have separate tactical and strategic resources for their characters' survivability in combat. In most versions of A/D&D, you have hit points that determine how much damage a character can take before he or she can no longer perform actions in combat. If you're playing in a more forgiving edition, you also have "Death's Door" rules that allow the character to dip into negative hit point values without being killed outright.

 

Many A/D&D adventures have an expectation of periodic healing, so if your party members have a rough fight, the party cleric, druid, or maybe paladin has to spend resources to make you viable for the next fight. This leads to the "healing battery" expectation, where someone in the party has to devote strategic resources to healing between fights -- or you're stuck walking back to a resting location with high frequency. Neither of those options are particularly enjoyable for many players.

 

With Stamina and Health, Stamina represents short term damage (shock, impact trauma, initial pain) and Health represents "the bad stuff" (burns, cuts, bruised ribs, etc.). When you take damage, you lose Stamina, but you also lose Health at a fixed ratio to the amount of Stamina damage you took. Currently it's at 1:4 Health:Stamina. When you run out of Stamina, your character gets knocked out, just like hitting 0 hit points in most editions of A/D&D. You're effectively out of the fight and you're not going to get back up without outside assistance.

 

If you're conscious, Stamina will regenerate quickly. "How quickly, Josh?" I don't know, man, but... pretty fast. It's the thing you're most likely to run out of in combat, but you'll probably get most or all of it back before you start another fight. You can also recover Stamina through the use of spells or class abilities, so it's something you can choose to tactically manage in combat. Between fights, it's really not an issue. No one has to cast ten healing spells in a row to get characters back into fighting shape because the Stamina will return in short order.

 

Health damage doesn't regenerate and you can't get it back with magic. You have to rest to recover Health. If your Health hits zero, you'll either enter some form of maimed/critically injured (and unconscious) state or, optionally (and all the time in Expert mode), be killed outright. If you explore far away from rest locations and keep getting your faces pounded in, you can have characters with very low Health and high Stamina. That's a dangerous circumstance to be in because even one or two blows could lead to a character being maimed or killed.

 

Ultimately, the mechanics are present to allow "hit points" and unconsciousness to be a real threat in individual combats without necessitating the presence of a healer or resting to allow for more exploration.

 

I personally never saw the issue with healing batteries in games where you controlled a large number of characters (wasn't that the point). Besides, everyone being able to heal (recover stamina) themselves (on top of stamina recovering quickly) makes the game feel less strategic and more like 6 1vX's as opposed to an actual 6vX. It's like the difference between old school shooters with health packs/armor/etc. and new ones with regenerating health.

 

On top of that the whole permanent health damage unless you rest feels even more restrictive then the old system. Before you could mitigate having to rest for a long time with potions and making sure your priest/druid had a good deal of healing spells, but now the second your front line dude takes 4x his/her health in stamina damage you're forced to rest (and realistically you'd want to do it much sooner to not risk them getting smoked).

[Game_Exile]

Personally, I believe AD&D elevated the "glass cannon" conception of wizards to an un-fun place. It's cool that, especially in 2nd Edition, wizards had so many spells to use, but in Baldur's Gate II, I believe it resulted in more-or-less strict combat puzzles rather than loose combat puzzles or tactical challenges. If the only viable way through a fight is to use a specific sequence of spells, that's not something that you tactically opt to do -- it's the thing you must do to move forward. And in many of those fights, the only way to figure out what spells to use is to trigger the fight, get wiped, reload, and try again.

at this. This is also why combat spells and combat abilities in general should be more visual and more about controlling space (i.e. have more complex effects than just raising or lowering one or two stats). There are AOE spells, knockback, charging, attacks of opportunity, and that's just scratching the surface. The Diablo games are a pretty good model for what combat in this game should be moving closer to.

 

Failure in a non-combat challenge is usually not in degrees, but in absolutes, and there's not much (if any) tactical decision-making that can change the outcome.

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a "non-combat challenge". All of a game's strategic components flow into each other, and it is a matter of giving each element the right shape and significance with relation to the rest. If failure in any challenge is not in degrees, then it is itself a degree of failure in relation to a whole. If you have a lot of non game ending challenges that you can't rightly see as degrees of success or failure, then what you have is a fragmented, ****ty game with very little meaningful complexity, like a collection of mini-games.

[Sacred_Path]

Not much new stuff there, but it's always good to hear from the man himself.

 

 

I'm a bit disappointed that combat and non-combat skills are seperated. I like it when I have to decide between studying alchemy and practicing shield blocking (*cough* realism *cough*). It can make for so much more diverse characters. Of course the challenge there is that you have to make non-combat skills as powerful and frequently usable as combat skills, but I'd trust you guys with that.

 

Oh and healing batteries are bad but magic users who can summon firestorms but can't heal a cut are just as bad (:

Edited December 6, 2012 by Sacred_Path

[Game_Exile]

Tim and I would both like to use an experience system that relies heavily (if not wholly) on quest, objective (i.e. steps within a quest), and challenge (e.g. exploration rewards) rewards. We want to encourage players to solve problems by whatever means are at their disposal.

But why would you use arbitrary XP rewards instead of rewards that are appropriate for the story and setting? The devs should be moving away from stuff like XP rewards and stat points, and instead, try to innovate better ways to meld the strategic components of their games with their games' "stories" (i.e. inventing new strategic systems along with the stories). That's what practically defines progress in the CRPG genre.

 

I want the player's choices from node to node to actually be more mechanically significant that they have been in most RPGs. That consists of two parts: the immediate reaction within the conversation and the long-term effects of how that choice feeds into your reputation. Sometimes the short-term effects are minor, but the reputation system won't "forget" what you've done.

If only systems like this could be more complex so that tacked on XP wouldn't be needed anymore. A multitude paths and perhaps a multitude of endings are also necessary, if you want choices to be reflected in your story.(and you can just choose a "canon" ending if you want continuity in expansions/sequels).

Edited December 6, 2012 by Game_Exile

[Tamerlane]

This is also why combat spells and combat abilities in general should be more visual and more about controlling space (i.e. have more complex effects than just raising or lowering one or two stats). There are AOE spells, knockback, charging, attacks of opportunity, and that's just scratching the surface. The Diablo games are a pretty good model for what combat in this game should be moving closer to.

As always, I recommend looking to RTS games in general and Starcraft in particular. I'd love to be able to mine-drag or run from a scarab to make it dud or throw down a disruption web.

[Osvir]

I believe the most skillfully executed designs in any medium appear effortless and natural. In reality, it typically takes an enormous amount of time, effort, and iteration to reach that point. It is extraordinarily uncommon for good design to arrive from a single, artful stroke of the pen, though the best designs will appear to have been made in that way.

 

Smoke on the water. The old school games have always appealed to me, personally, because of this. They were not just "first" but they were designed simplistic and rocking it. Good interview

 

Actions speak louder than words and all that...

Eh maybe. Talk is cheap as they say, you should be based on your actions in and of themselves for the most part. Talk is just a very easy low risk form of action after all. If you say "I will save the orphans!" then do it, well that really shouldn't factor in. If you say "I will save the orhpans!" then you fail, or worse, purposefully botch it then if anything your reputation loss should be worse. But if they don't bake that in through some means I will live. The "Planscape" method was considerably too specific. We don't need five different versions of "Yes I will do it."

 

I multi-quoted this for some reason.... right. There is also the question of "I will save the orphans!", and even though you tried you best you failed. Your reputation should be effected in some ways that, you tried at least. Maybe you managed to make it worse by some stupid decision that you did (a mistake) but how would the villager's know that? They'd only know that you come back worn, torn and in shame for not being able to save them. Likewise, the villager's could blame our group for not being able to save the children even if our "goodness" group tried their best.

 

"The Whining Villager": -Save our children because we aren't strong enough!-

Us: -Okay we'll try our best-

*fail*

Us: -We tried our best-

The Whining Villager: -Trying isn't good enough-

 

Or something. I don't think we necessarily need 5 different ways for "I'll do it" but 5 different ways to reach the end-goal/reward~ what I was also trying to say is that there shouldn't be just "Either you gain lots of reputation for saving orphans or you loose a ton of reputation". There should be some middle "safe" ground where you don't get too much (playing evil) or where you don't loose too much (playing good).

 

Though, perhaps this could be adjusted by some "game notices you are playing a very good character, thus every bad decision you do/make will lower your reputation relative to what your reputation is currently". A good character doing bad things should get some slack. Likewise, an evil character doing some good things should get some slack from the evil factions/companions.

 

I still want to march into a city with a evil party and see everyone scurry away, close their windows in fright as my character passes through (End-game reputation).

 

*WoT*

I personally never saw the issue with healing batteries in games where you controlled a large number of characters (wasn't that the point). Besides, everyone being able to heal (recover stamina) themselves (on top of stamina recovering quickly) makes the game feel less strategic and more like 6 1vX's as opposed to an actual 6vX. It's like the difference between old school shooters with health packs/armor/etc. and new ones with regenerating health.

 

On top of that the whole permanent health damage unless you rest feels even more restrictive then the old system. Before you could mitigate having to rest for a long time with potions and making sure your priest/druid had a good deal of healing spells, but now the second your front line dude takes 4x his/her health in stamina damage you're forced to rest (and realistically you'd want to do it much sooner to not risk them getting smoked).

 

I agree, but it also depends on how Stamina is thought out. I am curious as to what the "goal" is with Stamina. How Obsidian wants it to function in concept... that way it'd be easier to discuss the tactical aspects of it. It seems it'll be fairly tactical though and something to think about in most major fights (whilst fodder enemies are fodder enemies regardless and you'll barely break a sweat).

 

Not much new stuff there, but it's always good to hear from the man himself.

 

 

I'm a bit disappointed that combat and non-combat skills are seperated. I like it when I have to decide between studying alchemy and practicing shield blocking (*cough* realism *cough*). It can make for so much more diverse characters. Of course the challenge there is that you have to make non-combat skills as powerful and frequently usable as combat skills, but I'd trust you guys with that.

 

Oh and healing batteries are bad but magic users who can summon firestorms but can't heal a cut are just as bad (:

 

To be fair, they can't heal stamina. Possibly spells that heals some 2-5 Health points. I'd like to see potions that heal stamina though (an average~ amount). Perhaps even some potions that give +40 Stamina, but at the "end" of it you loose -50 Stamina (Because of over-exerting). Then there's the word and definition of "Reinvigorate" which I feel resonates with "Monk".

 

Perhaps a Cipher could pay his/her Stamina to heal someone else's with an "energy" loss (Cipher giving the Fighter +20 Stamina, looses an additional -10 Stamina, so the Fighter got +20 Stamina at the cost of -30 Stamina for the Cipher).

Edited December 6, 2012 by Osvir