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

[High Octane 881]

It's more tactical in that it wants you to focus more on accompilshing the mission/job/whatever, not exterminating the entire map, squishing every single bag of XP that pops up. Another previous comment makes it sound like there are going to be specific designated rest areas, so depending on how frequent they are, you may be heavily inclined to avoid combat as much as possible.

That's certainly an interesting take on the information we have been provided. A game that discourages you from actually killing ALL the baddies. Then again, if they do decide to remove xp from enemies all together, you may have a very valid argument.

 

As a side note this thread is getting slightly convoluted.

Edited December 7, 2012 by PB_Popeye

[Gfted1]

How is that tactical at all? How do "better players" limit health damage? Do casual players stand around in their underwear while "better" players remember to put on their armor? What?

[Malekith]

There sould be no indicators that you use a stat. Just dialog choices. That some of them are available because you had the right combination of stats/knowlege/reputation its not something the player should know about. Its more natural and makes you follow the dialog without metagaming it. Also it helps with replayability if you make a diffirent character and have completelly diffirent dialog choices

 

I think Josh has said that he doesn't like doing it that way, because then people don't even realize that they have different options.

Interesting. Source?

I just hope that in Expert Mode the visible stats are disabled. And i don't think that if people don't even realize that they have different options is true. If they read carefully the dialog they should understand their options. What exactly seeing that your charisma enabled you to use that option offers you?

Edited December 7, 2012 by Malekith

[AwesomeOcelot]

I think the problems associated with speech skills come more from having all NPCs voiced and having to balance them against the combat skills. The speech skills in VtM: Bloodlines were great for the dialogue, and good for role playing, dialogue and the dialogue system worked in that game.

 

There sould be no indicators that you use a stat. Just dialog choices. That some of them are available because you had the right combination of stats/knowlege/reputation its not something the player should know about. Its more natural and makes you follow the dialog without metagaming it. Also it helps with replayability if you make a diffirent character and have completelly diffirent dialog choices

 

This is actually a good portion of a solution assuming that someone hasn't already metagamed the hell out of that particular conversation. I know seeing that little [iNT] or (Intimidate) for me is so obvious to the point that I don't even bother reading the other options. Ideally the "charismatic" or other options would be added without knowledge that they have been. So basically once [skill or stat] hits a certain level it adds new dialogue options but with no tag or collor change or any other indicator. It's just another option.

 

The most blatantly obvious argument against Skill > Stat is simple. When is the last time you "practiced" your intimidation? Furthermore how does one exactly get better at intimidating? On the other side of the coin...would you not find an individual who can bench press 300lbs at least a LITTLE more intimidating than a scrawny stick figure, particularly upon initial encounter? Similar examples can be provided for each skill/stat combination.

 

I think you can practice to be more intimidating, it's about training your body language, gestures, learning how to make yourself look more imposing, dangerous, even showing feats of pain endurance by harming yourself can be intimidating. Bloodlines suggested that intimidation wasn't about brawn, a big but stupid person isn't as intimidating as a smart and mean person, so intelligence increases intimidation. Read Of Mice and Men, the small guy intimidates the big guy, because power dynamics don't always work the same way as a weight lifting competition.

[High Octane 881]

Touche.

I definitely agree that VtM:B did speech options very well, however they were also quite common, and often did not immediately determine a "victorious" conversation. Really that's my larger concern. I don't want an auto-win button for (lack of a better term) speech puzzles. Make me figure out how to reach the most favorable conclusion for ME. On that note, don't have a "winning" situation for most conversations. Make them have varying outcomes that aren't necessarily good or bad. I think the Witcher 2 was trying to do this but it felt...wrong some how IMO. I really can't put my finger on how though.

[J.E. Sawyer]

So on the one hand, we don't need to heal between fights in the traditional sense (which reduces a reason to restspam), but on the other hand, we're enforced to rest every couple of fights (which was avoidable if you used potions in the old IE games). I think those are the things josh wants to accomplish with this system and that is reasonable, but I'm still not sure if I like it that way.

Above a certain (fairly low) level, potions were not going to get your front-line characters back up to peak condition unless you were dumping gallons of potions down their throats. Whether it was due to loss of hit points or loss of per-rest/daily abilities, parties eventually had to rest in IE games. Pre-3E, clerics (or druids) had to devote a lot of their spell slots to healing. Some of those healing spells were used in combat, but often they were used between combat -- in essence trading the loss of one resource for another, but still accelerating the diminution of party resources. It also practically demanded the presence of a dedicated healer for extended exploration.

 

In 3E, the system ameliorated the necessity of loading up on healing spells by allowing good (and some neutral) clerics to spontaneously convert prepared spells into cure wounds spells of similar level. 4E took this a step further and implemented healing surges, which gave ALL characters much greater flexibility in healing themselves between combats, but gave them limited ability to do so within combat -- unless assisted by another character (e.g. a cleric casting healing word as a minor action). A party without a healer has a certain disadvantage within combat, but is nowhere near as disadvantaged between combats (compared to 2nd Ed. or 3E/3.5).

 

The Stamina/Health system is intended to accomplish a similar goal, but Health is still intended to be a resource that progressively dwindles down and encourages the player to rest. In PE, my belief is that this system will make that progression less chaotic and dependent on the presence of certain items/classes than it is in pre-4E D&D.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Ditto!

I thought this was an "old school CRPG"? So, why are we stepping away from skill and attribute checks in dialogues and instead are making it "E for Everybody"?

Just a reminder: Icewind Dale II was the only Infinity Engine game to have a dialogue skill (three, in fact). BG, BG2, IWD, and PS:T and related expansions all used ability scores and other more-or-less fixed character attributes like class and race. IMO, if you're going to have stat-based unlocks, I'd rather do that type of unlocking because it's often easier/more sensible to spread the checks out more evenly.

[Keyrock]

The Stamina/Health system is intended to accomplish a similar goal, but Health is still intended to be a resource that progressively dwindles down and encourages the player to rest. In PE, my belief is that this system will make that progression less chaotic and dependent on the presence of certain items/classes than it is in pre-4E D&D.

With playtesting you'll be able to test that belief. I'm not a designer or developer so this at best a mildly educated guess, but it would seem that once implemented the Stamina/Health dual bar system would require a fairly significant overhaul of game mechanics if scrapped altogether, however it would be quite easy to tweak, adjust, and balance.

[Tamerlane]

There sould be no indicators that you use a stat. Just dialog choices. That some of them are available because you had the right combination of stats/knowlege/reputation its not something the player should know about. Its more natural and makes you follow the dialog without metagaming it. Also it helps with replayability if you make a diffirent character and have completelly diffirent dialog choices

 

I think Josh has said that he doesn't like doing it that way, because then people don't even realize that they have different options.

Interesting. Source?

I just hope that in Expert Mode the visible stats are disabled. And i don't think that if people don't even realize that they have different options is true. If they read carefully the dialog they should understand their options. What exactly seeing that your charisma enabled you to use that option offers you?

I do remember him saying that, but I don't know if he ever said it on these forums.

 

Also, we've already designed in the era of invisible stat checks. They lead to players believing that their statistics actually have no effect on conversations. They literally don't know what they're missing.

 

In Darklands' Expert mode, greyed out/unavailable options were completely removed. You'd enter an interaction screen and see one or two options, not realizing that there are a ton of other things you could do if you only knew this saint/had that potion/bumped that skill. It's great for people who've already played the game 10 times, but for other people, it removed the impression that those saints/potions/skills had utility outside of their normal systemic use.

 

...

 

I'd like to look into options to disable messages of that sort (skill checks, attribute checks, reputation gain and loss), but in practice I think many people will either a) not use them or b) use them only for immersion purposes and metagame around their absence.

 

...

 

 

Like I wrote, I don't have any objections to optionally turning things off, but I have no illusions about how most people actually play these games vs. how they say they want to play them. I've been watching them do it and dealing with the aftermath for ~13 years.

 

Those quotes come from before they settled on their "Expert Mode" stretch goal, I guesst. I can link you to the source if you want, but I think it's behind a paywall, anyway.

 

...

 

Totally not stalking you, Josh Sawyer.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Tamerlane

[J.E. Sawyer]

It's actually already implemented and it works similarly to the classic MicroProse game Darklands. The major differences (IIRC) are that Darklands used armor to adjust the ratio of Endurance/Strength lost (i.e., heavier armor reduced the amount of Strength lost on a hit compared to Endurance) and that there were items to regain Strength, but they were rare/expensive.

[Malekith]

Ditto!

I thought this was an "old school CRPG"? So, why are we stepping away from skill and attribute checks in dialogues and instead are making it "E for Everybody"?

Just a reminder: Icewind Dale II was the only Infinity Engine game to have a dialogue skill (three, in fact). BG, BG2, IWD, and PS:T and related expansions all used ability scores and other more-or-less fixed character attributes like class and race. IMO, if you're going to have stat-based unlocks, I'd rather do that type of unlocking because it's often easier/more sensible to spread the checks out more evenly.

I completelly agree. What i don't understand is why can't we have the unlocked options without the game saying to us what stat unlocked that option. I explained my opinion better in my previous post:

There sould be no indicators that you use a stat. Just dialog choices. That some of them are available because you had the right combination of stats/knowlege/reputation its not something the player should know about. Its more natural and makes you follow the dialog without metagaming it. Also it helps with replayability if you make a diffirent character and have completelly diffirent dialog choices

EDIT: As long as you can disable it in Expert Mode i have no problem.Thanks for the post Tamerlane

Edited December 7, 2012 by Malekith

[J.E. Sawyer]

They'll be turned off in Expert mode and if you select an option in other modes. Personally, I think it stinks to high heaven and obfuscates what's going on, but it's no skin off my nose.

[Tagaziel]

This is actually a good portion of a solution assuming that someone hasn't already metagamed the hell out of that particular conversation. I know seeing that little [iNT] or (Intimidate) for me is so obvious to the point that I don't even bother reading the other options. Ideally the "charismatic" or other options would be added without knowledge that they have been. So basically once [skill or stat] hits a certain level it adds new dialogue options but with no tag or collor change or any other indicator. It's just another option.

 

I wish more games penalized not reading the dialogue options. Fallout: New Vegas: Dead Money had a brilliant moment, where succeeding a skill check turned the character hostile in the long run. The result was obvious, if the player listened to the character in question and figured him out.

[Keyrock]

I do understand that most people will meta-game the bejesus out of the game to explore all the different dialogue options and find the "best" one, I used to do that all the time. I am glad though that I'll be able to turn off the indicators in Expert Mode, though, as I've gotten more into just choosing an option and living with the consequences. This also ties into perma-death, as I've also gotten into letting fallen characters stay dead and dealing with the consequence rather than replaying the given encounter over and over until everyone survives. It took me years to get myself to the point that I'd allow myslef to do that, but I find it makes for more interesting gaming that way.

 

As an aside, a way to discourage meta-gaming the dialogues is having unforeseen consequences down the line. What may look like the "best" choice at first may come back to haunt you 10 hours of game time later. That way what choice is "best" isn't immediately clear after the conversation. Obviously internet walkthroughs and strategy guides will circumvent that, but there is little that can be done about that.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Keyrock

[Sacred_Path]

They'll be turned off in Expert mode and if you select an option in other modes. Personally, I think it stinks to high heaven and obfuscates what's going on, but it's no skin off my nose.

 

It's also kinda pointless possibly. I assume you'll only play in Expert mode after you're played through the game a number of times. Not knowing just how many branches your dialogue trees will have and how often you'll put in checks, I just guess we'll know what option will trigger what check.

[Somna]

I do understand that most people will meta-game the bejesus out of the game to explore all the different dialogue options and find the "best" one, I used to do that all the time. I am glad though that I'll be able to turn off the indicators in Expert Mode, though, as I've gotten more into just choosing an option and living with the consequences. This also ties into perma-death, as I've also gotten into letting fallen characters stay dead and dealing with the consequence rather than replaying the given encounter over and over until everyone survives. It took me years to get myself to the point that I'd allow myslef to do that, but I find it makes for more interesting gaming that way.

 

As an aside, a way to discourage meta-gaming the dialogues is having unforeseen consequences down the line. What may look like the "best" choice at first may come back to haunt you 10 hours of game time later. That way what choice is "best" isn't immediately clear after the conversation. Obviously internet walkthroughs and strategy guides will circumvent that, but there is little that can be done about that.

 

You mean turn off in the standard difficulty?

 

Expert doesn't have a toggle -- it's just permanently off.

[Keyrock]

You mean turn off in the standard difficulty?

 

Expert doesn't have a toggle -- it's just permanently off.

I meant that turning on Expert Mode will disable the indicators. In other words, what you wrote. Poor phrasing on my part.

[rjshae]

If conversation skills will have no significant impact on dialogue branching, then I remain unclear why they are even needed. The only one that makes some sense is a barter skill. Maybe an intimidate/taunt skill for use in combat?

 

As for the Health/Stamina split, perhaps armor will impact each one differently? If so, then you may be able to manage your health loss to some degree. I.e. against a typical weapon, maybe the damage ratio is 1:4 for light armor, or 1:8 for heavy armor.

Edited December 7, 2012 by rjshae

[Hormalakh]

It's actually already implemented and it works similarly to the classic MicroProse game Darklands. The major differences (IIRC) are that Darklands used armor to adjust the ratio of Endurance/Strength lost (i.e., heavier armor reduced the amount of Strength lost on a hit compared to Endurance) and that there were items to regain Strength, but they were rare/expensive.

 

Soo.....does this mean that in P:E there will be more than just armor to adjust these ratios (i.e. there will be spells/abilities that do something similar)?

[High Octane 881]

If conversation skills will have no significant impact on dialogue branching, then I remain unclear why they are even needed.

 

I'm a little confused how you came to this conclusion. I don't think anyone said they would have no impact. Significant impact is relative anyhow. They should have an effect but not necessarily a measurable one. A conversation is not a math equation . You can't just say [NPC QUESTION] + [PC ANSWER] x [sPEECH SKILL] = [DESIRED SOLUTION]. Or rather, in most games you can, but you shouldn't be able to.

[AwesomeOcelot]

It makes perfect sense to add modifiers to text to denote tone or add gestures, [starts sharpening blade], to show that the PC is expressing themselves in a certain manner because text does not communicate everything that would go on in conversations. Didn't make as much sense to have [iNT] This is you, using your intelligence, apparently something you don't do all the time. I'M BEING PERSUASIVE. I would love to have different success and failure states, different quests and options, different dialogue and conversation, from having speech skills, the original Fallout and Bloodlines did this a bit, and when they did it was fantastic, like The Master and Beckett.

[JOG]

I think Jagged Alliance is a prime example of how a shock / wound system might work. There is acute damage that heals pretty fast and there are wounds that heal slowly AND make your character less effective. That 1-2 HP fighter with full stamina should require his whole stamina to stand upright and stumble to the next healer, if he participates in the next fight he might very well die, but if he doesn't help his buddies he may die as well, along with the whole party.

 

A example for a bad health system is NWN2-OC: just kneel down for 6 real life seconds and be up to full health and have all spells restored, no consequences for resting in an hostile environment, no need for a guard, not even a proper amount of ingame-time passes let alone any impact on quests that should be time critical.

[High Octane 881]

It makes perfect sense to add modifiers to text to denote tone or add gestures, [starts sharpening blade], to show that the PC is expressing themselves in a certain manner because text does not communicate everything that would go on in conversations. Didn't make as much sense to have [iNT] This is you, using your intelligence, apparently something you don't do all the time. I'M BEING PERSUASIVE. I would love to have different success and failure states, different quests and options, different dialogue and conversation, from having speech skills, the original Fallout and Bloodlines did this a bit, and when they did it was fantastic, like The Master and Beckett.

 

I think where you and I are perhaps reaching a miscommunication is the same systems application as an intention rather than a result. What (it seems) you are implying is I'M BEING PERSUASIVE so there for I am attempting to be persuasive, as opposed to (and why I ultimately would like avoided) I'M BEING PERSUASIVE and therefore because I say I am, it is a fact. I am in fact succesfully being persuasive. Conversations almost never deal in absolutes.

 

Edit:From the AMA. I hope this holds weight because it's very much along the lines of what I would like:

 

Chris Avellone: "We are tying responses to attributes, but what we want to avoid in the mechanics is using attributes as "insta-win" buttons (for example, often in previous RPG titles, using the Skill option often is the instant win for quest solutions). What we'd rather do is have attributes and skills open up a range of new information that allows you to make a more informed decision about a choice rather than gate you to a solution.

This may sound complicated, but it's like the Empathy skill in Fallout 1 and 2 - it would only tell you if the person you were talking to would react positively or negatively to your dialogue option, but that didn't mean it was the right option to choose in every situation, and sometimes you wanted to make someone mad to achieve your goal.

Hope that makes sense."

Edited December 7, 2012 by PB_Popeye

[rjshae]

If conversation skills will have no significant impact on dialogue branching, then I remain unclear why they are even needed.

 

I'm a little confused how you came to this conclusion. I don't think anyone said they would have no impact. Significant impact is relative anyhow. They should have an effect but not necessarily a measurable one. A conversation is not a math equation . You can't just say [NPC QUESTION] + [PC ANSWER] x [sPEECH SKILL] = [DESIRED SOLUTION]. Or rather, in most games you can, but you shouldn't be able to.

Okay. But if I use a mechanistic skill to open a lock, I see the outcome. If I mix an alchemical brew together based on a skill, I also see the outcome. How will we see the outcome of a Diplomacy skill? If we don't, why would it matter whether we send forth Bruce the Brutish Barbarian to speak or Pete the Polite Paladin? In RL, if you never witness the outcome of your trained abilities, you'll never learn from your mistakes or discover the relative worth of your skill. In that case is it even a "skill"?

[Gfted1]

That 1-2 HP fighter with full stamina should require his whole stamina to stand upright and stumble to the next healer, if he participates in the next fight he might very well die, but if he doesn't help his buddies he may die as well, along with the whole party.

 

Absolutely. Except in PE there is no healer to go to and no healing devices to use. You must rest to get all better (health) and you can only do that in certain locations. I know a lot of you guys love the idea of having to stop progressing so you can walk out of the dungeon and across the map to get back to the town that had the inn, but I honestly dont understand why that sounds fun. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I sure hope the "normal" difficulty level doesnt operate this way.