Josh Sawyer on dealing with grognards

[Endrosz]

Wow, deriding your most hardcore fans and going full mainstream I see.

Well, I had high hopes for this game but it seems this might be worse than "Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel"!

 

The worst is yet to come, my friend.

 

Sawyer is actually a highly trained ninja zombie pirate cyborg legionnaire viking assassin, and every grognard who pisses on the game in this forum or elsewhere will be executed in the most brutal way imaginable. Right before that, they will be subjected to Sawyer's vision of a modern cRPG, which is the most hellish torment itself, obviously. That man is the Avatar of Cruelty, I tell you.

 

Your second statement is also correct, but not enough correct. This game might be worse than:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwDcZQunYiM

[IndiraLightfoot]

Josh saying this: “The biggest thing that modern RPGs do that I don’t like is to write dialogue for people who don’t like dialogue. Which I think is dumb and a load of ****,” he says, laughing. “My assumption is that if you want to have dialogue in and you want to make it a big part of the game, you assume that the player wants to read it and it’s your job to make it good.”

 

Makes me go        

[Monte Carlo]

Sawyer is every bit as dogmatic and strident about his vision as the gnarliest grog.

 

Ironic, really.

 

On the one hand he talks about dumbing down dialogue in modern RPGs, then in the next he talks about how great modern RPG builds are (i.e. dumbed-down).

 

Then he deploys his +5 strawman about what 'traditionalists' want.

 

Seriously, Josh, why don't you make a special weekly slot where you make scathing comments about people who've given you money?

[Bryy]

 

VO can really set the scene and set the game on fire. It's VO Mismanagement that has been hurting games recently. I'm looking forward to seeing how DA3 handles it.

 

In my mind BG1 is the perfect example of how voice acting can enhance a game. Lots of really colourful voice acting there. I wonder who they hired to do it? Reasonably they must have been in contact with some organization, I don't really see how you can recruit such a diverse cast on an individual basis. Local theatre actors must be the ideal candidates to contact for VO in a game.

 

VO only became in indicator of **** when people decided they needed "celebrities" to do it, and that all dialogue should be voice acted. Meanwhile I'm sure excellent semi-famous voice actors such as David Warner (Irenicus in BG2) and Stephen Russell (Garrett in Thief) could still make excellent contributions to games with a budget slightly above PE.

 

BG1 voice cast:

 

Dee Bradley Baker

Jim Cummings (Monterey Jack)

Bill Farmer (Goofy)

Jennifer Hale

Rob Paulsen (I assume I don't need to list him roles)

Kevin Michael Richardson

Frank Welker (Megatron)

 

So, it's not that video games didn't used to have celbrity voices; it's that they used to cost far less when games were less popular.

 

 

Seriously, Josh, why don't you make a special weekly slot where you make scathing comments about people who've given you money?

I'm sorry you feel slighted, but it's their game. It's not like he's saying "these people that play like this are criminals". You're projecting a much more vehement and nasty tone to what were some pretty straight-forward ideas. It's not like he's going "thanks for the money, suckers". 

[Tamerlane]

"Kill all nerds." - Josh "Kill All Dorks, Too" Sawyer

[Sarex]

This interview is gonna backfire on him so bad if the game underperforms. But it's nice that he is so confident in what he is making.

[IndiraLightfoot]

As much creative freedom as possible when making ourselves a party, please! If I want to have six monks in my party, it should be a viable option. In a perfect CRPG, there shouldn't be such a thing as a well-balanced party, if you get my drift.

 

Here are some heresy for y'all to chew on:

What if you take a dialogue- and text-heavy CRPG with deep soul-searching storylines and story branching, and then you mix in the smoothness of the combat seen in D3 or some popular MMOs, and then you improve on the diversity of those combat systems and make them RTwP. Wouldn't this be a possible success? And then this distinction between old and new won't matter much anymore. And by "diversity", I mean, instead of six different classes with fixed attributes and just a few skill tree options here and there, make at least double the amount of classes and have attributes mean a lot. Then add a choice of character race that's just as meaningful. Give us the option to pick interesting background traits and select talent pools. Also, for most new levels you reach, there should be plenty of branching and new skills to choose from, including spells and everything. And since it's a party-based game, the amount of character creation-development creativity should go through the roof and then some. Just make sure that levels just don't fly by, like they do in ARPGs, and don't have us drowning in loot. Make the characters you build more important than the loot combos you dress them up with. Hmm, in a weird way, I think Josh is already doing most of what I've just trying to describe here.

[Chippy]

All down to the talent for me.  A single line of text in Skyrim makes me contemplate eating my mouse for a more substantial moment of gaming experience, while I can lazily walk about Sigil talking to every possible thing in sight/absorbing every bit of text displayed for days.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Chippy

[PrimeJunta]

I don't think there's much risk of MMO-style cookie-cutter party being required. Josh has explicitly stated that his goal is to allow as much party diversity as possible. I.e., that an all-ranger party will  be entirely feasible and will be enjoyable to play – even if it'll be quite different from the "standard" one.

[Karkarov]

But seriously, that comment is nonsense. Most "traditionalists" or "Grognards" I've seen want the OPPOSITE. We are the ones who look at games like WoW and Dragon Age 2 and scoff at the cookie-cutter template parties those games require for success. Ie... Gotta have a Tank, Gotta have a DPS character, and gotta have a Crowd Controller, or else GTFO.

Actually Stun that really isn't right.  "Tank" is not a class.  It is a role a character has in a party.  In WoW your "Tank" could be a Warrior, or a Paladin, or a Death Knight, a Druid, or even a Monk.  There is plenty of diversity between those classes and some of them are better at some parts of being a "Tank" than others.  They are not the same class, they don't play 100% the same way, and they don't "Tank" 100% the same way, or even have all the same abilities.

 

What Josh is saying is he wants to avoid situations where you have to have say a Paladin or you lose because the enemy does a spell that can only be countered by a Paladin buff.  If you don't have the Paladin buff the spell nails you and makes the fight basically unbeatable due to the penalty it inflicts.  That is a forced party make up.  It isn't that you needed a "Tank" it is that you needed a Paladin specifically. 

 

The Trinity (which is what you are talking about) is simply a method by which the devs can design encounters because by enforcing the Trinity they know what skills you have so they can build fights that test those skills and give every person in the party a real job.  What you and the other Grog's want is not an encounter design system, you just want a free for all where fights are designed like old school D&D where the idea is "the party is this strong so I should use enemies this strong".  That doesn't work in a PC game, it only works in D&D because every player and the DM are living breathing humans who can react in a human way.  The DM can choose to lighten up if an encounter is tearing up the party more than intended, they can choose to beef up the enemies if it seems too easy.  They can make the enemies use unorthodox strategies because they can think on the fly.

 

PC AI can't "think on the fly" and can't choose to make itself easier or weaker based on player performance.  The beholder can't "choose" to not use it's save or die death stare.  Thus the Trinity is born because it allowed those Devs to make fun, varied, and challenging fights without ever having to worry if the party had a Death Ward spell pre cast or even had the ability to cast it at all.

 

Also while PrimeJunta is right about his "all ranger party" comments.... Sawyer never said he would recommend people play that way or that it would be anything resembling easy.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Karkarov

[Monte Carlo]

 

 

What Josh is saying is he wants to avoid situations where you have to have say a Paladin or you lose because the enemy does a spell that can only be countered by a Paladin buff.  If you don't have the Paladin buff the spell nails you and makes the fight basically unbeatable due to the penalty it inflicts.  That is a forced party make up.  It isn't that you needed a "Tank" it is that you needed a Paladin specifically.

 

But who was asking for that, Kark? Not me and I'm king of the Grogs.

 

For some reason that interview annoyed me.

[Karkarov]

 

What Josh is saying is he wants to avoid situations where you have to have say a Paladin or you lose because the enemy does a spell that can only be countered by a Paladin buff.  If you don't have the Paladin buff the spell nails you and makes the fight basically unbeatable due to the penalty it inflicts.  That is a forced party make up.  It isn't that you needed a "Tank" it is that you needed a Paladin specifically.

 

But who was asking for that, Kark? Not me and I'm king of the Grogs.

 

For some reason that interview annoyed me.

Stun has pages and pages of comments about how he likes hard counters and save or die mechanics all over this forum.  Forced party make up is just the oldest form of a hard counter.  Also try beating Baldur's Gate 2 with no casters and let me know how how it goes Monte.  I bet you it doesn't go very well. 

 

Why?  Because Baldur's Gate 2 basically requires you to have at least one Mage or half the fights in the game are near unwinnable because you can't counter the other mages crap without your own.  Not to mention all the instant death effects you need a priest type character to protect your from.  I guess you could eventually brute force your way through it just off reloads and putting the game on minimum difficulty but I would love to see your final reload count.  It would make peoples Dark Souls death count look like a joke I imagine.

 

The interview probably annoyed you simply because Josh stated his opinions in a very blunt way.  I suspect this interview was very informal because most of the time he seems to be very restrained and picks his words deliberately.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Karkarov

[Infinitron]

"Hard counter" doesn't exactly mean "forced party composition" in the sense that you absolutely can't win without that composition. There are, after all, plenty of grogs who have beat BG2 with a solo rogue or whatnot.

 

It means that a particular party composition is extremely effective against a certain enemy, while other party compositions are extremely inefficient, making that party composition a "no-brainer".

Edited March 29, 2014 by Infinitron

[Wirdjos]

 

Also while PrimeJunta is right about his "all ranger party" comments.... Sawyer never said he would recommend people play that way or that it would be anything resembling easy.

 

 

After reading through three pages of people lauding absolute freedom in party composition, I was getting worried I was the only one that appreciated party balance. Of course I don't want to be restricted to keeping a particular class or build with me, but I do want to notice that I don't have it. If I roll a full party of rangers, I want to notice that I don't have access to extremely useful wizard spells. I still want to be able to play the game fully whatever I choose party-wise, but I do want to be at least slightly punished for making strategically poor decisions. If only to add to the wild tactics people like those who love mages and only mages will have to come up with to deal with the fact that mages, and any other class, do have weak points better filled by different classes.

[Stun]

 

But who was asking for that, Kark? Not me and I'm king of the Grogs.

 

For some reason that interview annoyed me.

Stun has pages and pages of comments about how he likes hard counters and save or die mechanics all over this forum.  Forced party make up is just the oldest form of a hard counter.  Also try beating Baldur's Gate 2 with no casters and let me know how how it goes Monte.  I bet you it doesn't go very well.

 

That has nothing to do with anything. Hard Counters and chance are a completely different subject, and Josh did not cite them as things that Grognards desire. Not in this article at least. And don't kid yourself. There will be hard counters in PoE, and chance. We have already seen enough class abilities and mechanics to prove that.

 

Why?  Because Baldur's Gate 2 basically requires you to have at least one Mage or half the fights in the game are near unwinnable because you can't counter the other mages crap without your own. Not to mention all the instant death effects you need a priest type character to protect your from.  I guess you could eventually brute force your way through it just off reloads and putting the game on minimum difficulty but I would love to see your final reload count.  It would make peoples Dark Souls death count look like a joke I imagine.

I have, many times, beaten BG2 without any spell casters. I have soloed Ascension on Insane with a vanilla Rogue. I have seen others do the same with Berserkers, Kensai and other completely non-spellcasting classes. It's not, by any means, impossible. In fact, after about chapter 3, its not even particularly difficult.

 

BG2's vast, vast tactical freedom allows it, as does its loot system. That is something Josh should probably take a hint on.

 

The interview probably annoyed you simply because Josh stated his opinions in a very blunt way.  I suspect this interview was very informal because most of the time he seems to be very restrained and picks his words deliberately.

Perhaps, although I'd argue that blunt opinions on their own tend to be refreshing, and when they come from game developers, reassuring. But again, making blunt statements is one thing, and bluntly assigning traits to whole swaths of gamers that they don't have is quite another. Edited March 29, 2014 by Stun

[Monte Carlo]

^ Yep, I beat BG2 with three fighters, one of each kit.

[Infinitron]

 

BG2's vast, vast tactical freedom allows it, as does its loot system. That is something Josh should probably take a hint on.

 

 

Actually, what allows it is that the game is easy/broken. If BG2 required a truly min-maxed party, if it didn't let you rest at will completely negating all long-term strategy, your self-imposed challenge of picking an inferior party composition wouldn't have worked as well, I wager.

 

Greater balance for greater difficulty. No longer does the game designer have to say "but wait, what if the player doesn't have the good class here? better make this fight easier" when he designs an encounter.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Infinitron

[Monte Carlo]

 

 

Actually, what allows it is that the game is easy/broken

 

Yeah, that'll be one of the best-selling and much-loved RPGs of all time. I couldn't care less if it wasn't a 'design classic' it was more fun than a sack of kittens.

 

And my concern is that while worshipping at the elusive altar of 'balance' you might miss the fun sort of trickling away. As for 'greater difficulty?' Nah. People don't want to read rules or understand stuff. They want to jump right in. And press the awesome button.

 

My hope is that the different game modes mitigate a lot of the design decisions that smack of popamole / jump right in.

[Endrosz]

You need to play more German-style boardgames, MC. Compared to the overcomplicated and usually wildly unbalanced American-style boardgames (you roll a dice to roll a dice to roll a dice to actually get some result), they are very streamlined, easy to learn, fast-playing and balanced while still having amazing depth of gameplay (American-style games usually have more flavor and atmosphere, to be fair). You know, like ancient Go, which has the simplest of rules, but the complexity of Chess (I've even heard some in-the-know people say that its complexity actually surpasses Chess). What I know about game design, I mostly learned it from Citadels, Galaxy Trucker, Tigris and Euphrates, Seven Wonders, and more.
 


(The above picture was taken at a Go tournament about 2200 years ago, when a feud between two Chinese warlords was resolved by playing Go instead of the usual massacre.)

Sawyer is absolutely right: most people loved those old IE games despite their crappy gameplay systems, not because of them. But others, those who replayed them many times, having lived with the badness for so long, it is now ingrained in their brains, and they crave more, just like codependent people can't stop wanting to have hate in their personal lives. What he says in that interview is actually a very mild-mannered, polite version of the truth. "God bless them", yeah.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Endrosz

[Stun]

Sawyer is absolutely right: most people loved those old IE games despite their crappy gameplay systems, not because of them. But others, those who replayed them many times, having lived with the badness for so long, it is now ingrained in their brains, and they crave more, just like codependent people can't stop wanting to have hate in their personal lives.

No, I don't buy that. First off, these games did not come out in a vacuum. Had they been littered with bad gameplay, they would have never sold as well as they did, lasted as long as they did, been ranked in the "top 10 of all time!" list by just about every gaming publication on earth as they have, and we wouldn't be here today responding to a Kickstarter pitch that promises to give us another game like them.

 

Second, the IE games themselves were not one monolithic entity. That is to say, the game play mechanics of Planescape Torment are light years different than BG2's gameplay mechanics, etc.

 

Lastly, That Sawyer post you linked us to is a pure minority opinion. Of HIS. He has yet to prove that anything he's saying is "Right". He will get the chance with PoE, and we will be the judges. But that is not going to happen until several months from now. In the meantime, many of his gameplay preferences have already been put in place in, say, 4e D&D and you can see the fan reaction to them. It's not Great. 4e stuff has not proven as successful as its predecessors, in any way. Even Wizards of the Coast realized the fail. "D&D Next" will be coming out soon, and it will quickly replace just about everything in 4ed, instead of just adding to it, like previous versions of D&D did to their predecessors.

Edited March 29, 2014 by Stun

[Death Machine Miyagi]

You need to play more German-style boardgames, MC. Compared to the overcomplicated and usually wildly unbalanced American-style boardgames (you roll a dice to roll a dice to roll a dice to actually get some result), they are very streamlined, easy to learn, fast-playing and balanced while still having amazing depth of gameplay (American-style games usually have more flavor and atmosphere, to be fair). You know, like ancient Go, which has the simplest of rules, but the complexity of Chess (I've even heard some in-the-know people say that its complexity actually surpasses Chess). What I know about game design, I mostly learned it from Citadels, Galaxy Trucker, Tigris and Euphrates, Seven Wonders, and more.

 

Best of all possible worlds is a game with a simple and easily approachable design which nevertheless supports a massive variety of strategies and styles of play, and all while still providing a serious challenge. Not holding my breath for P:E to provide all of that in one package, especially since setting all of that up in an RPG is a whole different ballgame than setting it up in a board game, but kudos if they manage it. 

 

If they have to sacrifice something, though...I think I've had enough 'streamlining' in my CRPGs for one lifetime. If 'easy to learn' ends up translating as 'homogenized', such that every playthrough feels about the same regardless of class or race or weapon selection or whatever else, I'll take daunting complexity any day over that. 

[600lbpanther]

 

(The above picture was taken at a Go tournament about 2200 years ago, when a feud between two Chinese warlords was resolved by playing Go instead of the usual massacre.)

 

 

 

Supposedly, some "experts" are now starting to provide evidence that this photo was taken anywhere from 1500-2000 BC rather than 2200BC as initially believed.  Evidence they point too is the ancient woman's jean shorts that are between a full length jean pant and jean short commonly worn today.  Also, the subtle orange of the student's shirts lend themselves to a dye that was not easily replicated in 2200BC (but could have...I am not a scientist).  One other thing, some of the symbols on the tables seem to be the symbol that appears on the Korean Flag.  This could be where the symbol first came from.

 

This, of course, prompts us to the obvious question:  Did dinosaurs and humans co-exist? 

Edited March 29, 2014 by 600lbpanther

[Monte Carlo]

 

 

No, I don't buy that. First off, these games did not come out in a vacuum. Had they been littered with bad gameplay, they would have never sold as well as they did, lasted as long as they did, been ranked in the "top 10 of all time!" list by just about every gaming publication on earth as they have, and we wouldn't be here today responding to a Kickstarter pitch that promises to give us another game like them.

 

QFT

[Ffordesoon]

@Stun:

 

They weren't "littered with bad gameplay." They were littered with design decisions that didn't work as intended, just like every game. PoE will be no exception, I'm sure. And some of those design decisions will work out better than expected, and some will work out worse than expected. The IE games worked, and continue to work, in spite of their puzzling and/or frustrating quirks, because they were wonderful games overall.

 

And I would say most of the changes are honestly closer to Pathfinder, which has been largely embraced by the old-school fans of D&D, and currently reigns unchallenged at the top of the tabletop pops.

[JFSOCC]

You need to play more German-style boardgames, MC. Compared to the overcomplicated and usually wildly unbalanced American-style boardgames (you roll a dice to roll a dice to roll a dice to actually get some result), they are very streamlined, easy to learn, fast-playing and balanced while still having amazing depth of gameplay (American-style games usually have more flavor and atmosphere, to be fair). You know, like ancient Go, which has the simplest of rules, but the complexity of Chess (I've even heard some in-the-know people say that its complexity actually surpasses Chess). What I know about game design, I mostly learned it from Citadels, Galaxy Trucker, Tigris and Euphrates, Seven Wonders, and more.

 

 

(The above picture was taken at a Go tournament about 2200 years ago, when a feud between two Chinese warlords was resolved by playing Go instead of the usual massacre.)

 

Sawyer is absolutely right: most people loved those old IE games despite their crappy gameplay systems, not because of them. But others, those who replayed them many times, having lived with the badness for so long, it is now ingrained in their brains, and they crave more, just like codependent people can't stop wanting to have hate in their personal lives. What he says in that interview is actually a very mild-mannered, polite version of the truth. "God bless them", yeah.

Citadels is my favourite game. That game needs to be on Tabletop. It's the best balanced game I've ever seen, it's easy to learn hard to master. It's deep but not complex, and it rewards calculated, selfish, and pragmatic strategies. There is some luck, but luck is not the determining factor. The Artwork is terrific, beautiful and fitting the theme of building and expanding your city state in Renaissance Italy.

And this game is great even with two players, which I think is a rarity. many games are only really fun when it is played by more than two players.

The Dynamics of each game are different based on how it develops, on the number of players, and the type of characters playing.

 

I just wish people would call it by the name I know it by: Machiavelli. Because it takes a Machiavellian mindset to be effective at this game and because it's set in Renaissance Italy.

Edited March 29, 2014 by JFSOCC