JOSH SAWYER REGRETS: Hard counters, sillier companions, and more

[Infinitron]

In his recent GDC talk: http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/misc/pe-jsawyer-looking-back.pdf
 

 

Edited August 20, 2016 by Infinitron

[anameforobsidian]

Interesting.  I assume it'll be a long time before the talk is actually posted.

- It looks like he got the right take on the Stronghold.

 

- I might have different opinions if I could hear it.  I would hardly say PE is less tactically complex than BG: alpha strikes; positioning; and status effects are more important in PE on the harder modes.  

 

I'm still divided over whether hard counters are better than strong soft counters.  Basically, I think hard counters should have some type of verisimilitude.  Flying creatures immune to ground spells?  Makes perfect sense.  Immune to fighter's knockdown, maybe, maybe not.  Immune to a thrown net or sleep?  Definitely not.  Soft counters (basically very strong defenses against a certain type of attack), basically do the same thing but allow for those so-so cases.  Maybe a fighter could send a blind, disoriented, and sickened dragon careening to the ground.

 

I don't think the 5+ party members were what made it fast and complex.  Complex sure, as more people add more options.  However, the real driver of complex combat is the vast number of active options in gameplay.  Encouraging less active builds would mean you get the tactical and build complexity of a full party, but have to switch your attention less.  Fast?  That's different entirely.   

 

- The bit about Betas makes me wonder if Obsidian will ever use beta access as a crowdfunding reward again.

 

 

I can only puzzle out some of this from the slides rather than speech.

- How would LoD and PBR affect art?  I'm guessing from google searches that this is Level of Design and Physical Based Rendering.

- Where did he come down on skeumorphic gui?  I'm guessing against it.

- What is Tyranny's Highlight system?

[Nonek]

I quite liked that we didn't have the almost obligatory Joss Whedon squeeing lowest common denominator humour in Poe, that was one of its highlights. I far prefer either a Wilde like use of actual wit or vulgar commentary such as say Mercutio provides in Romeo & Juliet, or any number of characters who serve as comic relief in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Witcher also provides a wealth of such bawdy foils as well as Morte in Planescape: Torment.

 

Personally i'd add several complaints to the one Mr Sawyer raises: The first being that the attributes are unintuitiive and nonsensical, Tyranny solves this easily enough so why was it a problem in Poe? Second, the infinite stash, or let's encourage boring trash collection to pad gameplay and not even bother explaining it. Thirdly, the reliance on WOW class archetypes and 4e mechanics, I realise it's almost obligatory now to copy design off these dull grinding simulators but for once somebody please break the mold.

 

If they wish to better pace lore then there is one title that they can look at which performed this feat masterfully, and with an extremely strange gameworld, concept and very little handholding, this is of course Planescape: Torment. There were numerous sources for organic exposition, companions who could add to that, and it never felt like one was being inundated with information for no reason. Look at Creeden selling his "ratsies" in the Hive, providing exposition and a friendly face because it helped him sell more of his product. The Frightened Hive Dweller, cowering before a scarred wreck and answering out of fright but still looking to earn a bit of jink and unwilling to answer some "dim" questions etcetera.

 

Nice to see Mr Sawyer's analysis however.

 

Edit: Oh forgot to add a personal gripe, motivation, I had very little and for it to end in a boss fight as usual, utterly disappointing and (considering the antagonists background) extremely unlikely. That said I must praise several aspects, the IE feel, the expansions, the art design, the soundtrack, an interesting gameworld (that needed exploring in this first game rather than changing,) and last but not least producing a large, successful Kickstarter and showing that the right people can make this crowdfunding work very well.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Nonek

[Revan91]

I don't really think there's the need to include more silly characters.

The tone of PoE never bothered me and it was right in the context of the Hollowborn curse and the difficulties faced by the people of the Dyrwood. Times were bad for a lot of folks, so it would've been weird to have many NPCs act in funny ways.

Sure, some funny moments are good and don't necessarily ruin the game or its more serious tone (see The Witchers, that managed to mix good humuor and funny parts with the darker atmosphere that permeates the world), but I don't want too much sillyness in Obsidian's games. Also, Maneha was probably the most silly character in PoE and she was hardly a fan favorite, while Durance was one of the most loved (alongside Eder who has some funny lines and is not totally serious but has a serious and somewhat tragic background and questline).

 

Other than that, Josh seems to have focused on the right things in his slides and I agree with most of his points, so PoE2 should shape up very nicely.

I hope his talk will be available soon, should be interesting.

[Infinitron]

 

I'm still divided over whether hard counters are better than strong soft counters.  Basically, I think hard counters should have some type of verisimilitude.  Flying creatures immune to ground spells?  Makes perfect sense.  Immune to fighter's knockdown, maybe, maybe not.  Immune to a thrown net or sleep?  Definitely not.  Soft counters (basically very strong defenses against a certain type of attack), basically do the same thing but allow for those so-so cases.  Maybe a fighter could send a blind, disoriented, and sickened dragon careening to the ground.

 

 

Josh's ideal of soft counters (or more accurately, use of resistances rather than total immunities) was commendable, but it ultimately didn't work well with the way numbers scaled up in this game. Accuracy was too easy to pump up, rendering most resistances moot. You need a much more controlled progression to use them effectively.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Infinitron

[demeisen]

"Many wished for more light, fun, or silly elements".

 

​

​Please no.

​

​A lot of what made PoE brilliant is that it was not "light, fun, and silly".  I think it had just the right touch of humor... and there's a fair bit, it just blends in nicely with the overall tone of the story and does not generally come across as "silly".

​

​"You want something good and forgotten, you take it to the Abbey."

Eder stares at Durance, scratching his beard in contemplation...

 

​I think PoE1 handled humor well.  It doesn't need more, and it doesn't need to dumb down the humor it's got.  "Light and fun" characters will get real annoying, real fast.

​

[Infinitron]

 

- What is Tyranny's Highlight system?

 

That's wiki-style hyperlinked lore definitions, like what PoE has in its encyclopedia. Tyranny has those in regular dialogue.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Infinitron

[anameforobsidian]

Wizardry would be pleased.

[Loren Tyr]

 

Easier to pick up than AD&D 2nd Ed., but lost some of the tactical complexity, combat became too fast with 5+ party members

 

I don't get this at all, I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The PoE system doesn't suffer from the sometimes quite counterintuitive way AD&D was set up (AC vs THAC0, the strange scaling of attribute score bonuses; ie. the stuff that was generally fixed in 3rd Edition already), but it has far more variables and is generally more complex. In part this is also due to being better balanced, you don't have obvious dump stats like charisma (or WIS/INT generally for non-magic users) so you have more genuine decisions to make. In combination with the... suboptimal documentation of mechanics in general and specific effects, I'd say it is rather harder to pick up than the IE games were. I also think that because of the greater mechanical complexity, diversity and better balance it is tactically far more complex and rewarding, compared to those older games. So where he is getting this from, I have no idea. 

 

As for combat becoming too fast... isn't that what the 'pause' function is for? I certainly would welcome additional auto-pause options, but I don't see how 'too fast' is a problem (or even could be, in a pause-and-play system). I also sincerely hope the deeply idiotic decision made for Tyranny to reduce the party size to four doesn't get applied to PoE2.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[demeisen]

​

 

As for combat becoming too fast... isn't that what the 'pause' function is for? I certainly would welcome additional auto-pause options, but I don't see how 'too fast' is a problem (or even could be, in a pause-and-play system). I also sincerely hope the deeply idiotic decision made for Tyranny to reduce the party size to four doesn't get applied to PoE2.

 

Yeah.  Those were my thoughts about that slide as well.  Part of the appeal of this sort of system for me is that combat is akin to a little chess match.  You pause, and give orders for 6 characters to all take an action simultaneously to achieve some tactical goal.  You can pause as much or as little as you need to, so you set the pace yourself.  I can only imagine that people complaining about it being "too fast" are trying to play it like an "action RPG".

​

Elsewhere, his slides talk about some criticisms I haven't heard much of.  E.g, graphics being "too static", with the proposed solution being dynamic cloth modeling and so forth.  The forum feedback I've heard about PoE1's art has been overwhelmingly positive.  I sort of hope Obsidian doesn't go too far down the "fancy physically based cloth modeling" road.  It's easy to burn a lot of developer and artist cycles on that stuff, rather than on gameplay.  I feel that kind of thing is a big component of why I don't enjoy many big-budget AAA studio games.  Graphically they are impressive as all hell... but way too often I find them bland, dumbed down, and light on thinking and reading in favor of pandering to the ADD crowd.  (Which to be fair, is a big market).

​

​And about preserving 6 character parties... oh, absolutely.  It would damage the game, and its combat system, to back that off.

​

[PangaeaACDC]

Interesting slides. I'm one of the people who for some silly reason never got to supporting it on Kickstarter (intended to, but there were many, and suddenly it was too late), and I'm yet to buy the expansions. I liked the game, but I didn't love it. It does a lot of things right, but there is something about it that isn't perfect, that is kind of hard to put my finger on.

 

I liked the scripted interactions, but am a little worried by "make more of them". It could very well be that they got the balance right in PoE, and pumping the world full of these would take away from the experience. Spice is good -- but not if you choke on it.

 

Didn't miss "funny or silly" characters either. Admittedly there isn't a Morte type character, but there are some funny moments, like when Eder (?) remarks that he travels with friends -- and Durance. More could perhaps be done with such party interaction / banter, but I'm not sure if "silly" characters would be the right move. It may just feel forced. Spread it around instead of making a 'clown'.

 

The Stronghold was really disappointing to me. You kind of just check off items on a list, and that's more or less that. Not much real content or interaction, apart from underneath it.

 

The combat on Yenwood Field was great, the whole thing, but especially the big and chaotic combat at the end.

 

There was a LOT of lore to sink our teeth into, and for most of the game the whole world felt a bit overwhelming and I never really got my head properly around it. More than once did I look up the wiki to try to get a grasp of the various wars, factions, races and politics. And then you have that massive info-dump at the end of the game, which felt like "oh ****, we better conclude things now". Was the game intended to be bigger, and you had to quickly wrap things up? Whatever it was, it didn't feel good. Having just completed Witcher 2 for the first time, there was a bit of the same there, but it simply felt better, and made a lot more sense.

 

I've seen many say that there should have been more focus on the main antagonist (if we can call it that), and I sort of agree, and then don't. With the way the world was set up and the role the antagonist played, it didn't make sense to have him pop up very often. But the whole thing did feel a bit strange and 'off', so perhaps it would have been better with a whole different type of story instead.

 

I wasn't a big fan of the soft counter system. But one advantage of it is that we don't necessarily need to die several times in an encounter first to know what we are up against, and then prepare for that. But it also means less complexity in combat in terms of strategy, so most often we can just burst into combat and deal with it there and then.

 

Generally I think the GUI is good, but one thing I hated with it was how darn hard it was to figure out how to distribute items to reduce the amount of 'wasted' extra attribute points and various bonuses. Suppressed effects should be much more accessible, like with a hover over the items on the main character/inventory screen.

 

Although it's hardly realistic, I loved that we had an infinite backpack, and could pick up every tiny or big piece of loot around. Very early on in Witcher 2 I had to install a tiny mod that reduced weight on small items, so it was possible to pick up monster parts and so forth without getting encumbered. Running back and forth to shops to load off is NOT fun, and would have been a right nightmare in this game where we pick up so many xaurip spears and so on. And no, leaving that stuff behind is NOT an option :D

 

Partially because accuracy and so forth kept rising, weapons and armour often felt rather poor. The added accuracy on the best weapons was at best of marginal importance, and very few weapons truly felt great or epic. The soulbound weapon I could get without the expansions was good, and some of the 'normal' weapons had nice additional non-craftable properties, but hardly anything to write home about compared with Crom Faeyr and so forth. Of course, this may have been a good thing, as there is more variety in the type of builds people tend to wind up with, instead of pretty soon going for the best gear and designing your characters that way in terms of proficiency and suchlike.

 

As good as the music is in the game, I'd love more customisable options, particularly so that it's easy to turn off combat music in the settings. Pretty soon I had to simply delete those files, because hearing the same somewhat jarring music over and over and over again becomes annoying. There is a LOT of combat in the game after all. Other than that I loved the music in the game, and the atmosphere felt really good.

 

I'm sure it was nice for all the Kickstarter backers, but pretty please give us an option to remove those 500 or so NPCs, if you do the same for PoE2. Same with the tombstones. This was a funny touch in BG, but in PoE it was ridiculous, and the only option was to try to utterly ignore them.

 

On recruitable NPCs, I would like more, and with deeper interactions. Greedy, I know. One of the reasons the BG games have so high replayability is the many recruitable NPCs, and party interactions that comes with different makeups.

 

Also, for the love of Eothas, get on top of bugs much sooner. I bought the game over a year after release, and there are still some fairly serious bugs in the game. I know that a lot of releases use their customers as beta testers, which made it all the more disappointing that it was much the same for PoE, which was Kickstarted and didn't have a publisher breathing down their necks with threats of water boarding.

Edited August 20, 2016 by PangaeaACDC

[anameforobsidian]

Graphics being too static probably refers to moving trees and the like.

[PangaeaACDC]

As for combat becoming too fast... isn't that what the 'pause' function is for? I certainly would welcome additional auto-pause options, but I don't see how 'too fast' is a problem (or even could be, in a pause-and-play system). I also sincerely hope the deeply idiotic decision made for Tyranny to reduce the party size to four doesn't get applied to PoE2.

 

Bummer!! That is extremely disappointing.

 

Don't think the PoE combat was too faster either, at least for the most part. I used many auto-pause functions, so even easy combat took some time. I'd love another option for auto-pause, so that we didn't get into the silly situation of trying to pause combat, then it got auto-paused, try to pause again, et cetera... BG games had the same issue, but after 15-odd years, you'd think it was possible to come up with a solution to this, like a separate button for pause and un-pause, in addition to a general pause/un-pause button (space iirc).

[Climhazzard]

Sometimes I think the combat is to fast, literally, mostly when large groups of enemies have high movement speed, like from a chant or aura, sometimes both.  Paladin's increase party movement speed, maybe the chanter option should decrease enemy movement speed.  Or perhaps instead of the speed modes being slow, normal, and fast; they should be slower, slow, normal, and fast.  Either way I didn't feel like it was a problem in very many encounters.

 

I don't like hard counters when they don't make sense, such as most of the hard counters added into PoE.  In older games the hard counters made a bit more sense.  Like...  a golem is hard, you would need to crush it, not cut or pierce it.  But ice blights... they're hard, and immune to crushing... doesn't make sense.  A fire blight being immune to fire is obvious, but why one type of physical damage and not another?  Soft enemies would be a better candidate for being immune to crushing, like oozes, but we don't see that.  TBH the hard counters in PoE feel rushed, without a lot of thought put into them, random, if PoE 2 uses hard counters I hope they're a little deeper.

[anameforobsidian]

I didn't get the ice blight damage immunity.  It wasn't a terrible problem but I didn't get it.

Edited August 21, 2016 by anameforobsidian

[house2fly]

Hopefully a sequel would have the same balance of humor we got in the expansion, which had a good amount of it clearly in response to comments about the main game- Zahua's obsession with pain, Kana coming onto Maneha and then trying to talk to her about girls when she turns out to be gay, etc.

[Karkarov]

Please christ no hard counters and no Tiny Tina moronic "silly" characters.  Lilacor was cute the first time I found it, every playthough since he has stayed un equipped.

[Michael_Galt]

I completely agree.  I was one of the first backers of POE.  I'm about to give it another shot.  I played it on release, beat it, started another character and quickly lost interest.  I don't need to play a game where everyone is miserable, everywhere sucks, and no matter what you do, it doesn't really get any better.  No thanks.  If the next POE is the same type of atmosphere and all the environments are dismal... won't buy it.  That simple. 

 

I personally found the stats to be highly confusing, as well as some of the combat mechanics.  Why can't we just use the same stats that everyone has been using since the beginning of time?  Intelligence, Charisma, Wisdom, Dexterity, Strength and Endurance.  I loved how Arcanum had Beauty and Luck.  I understood why to put points in those things or not.  I saw exactly what happened because of those choices.  Simple.  I'm not going to read through the game's feedback to figure out what damage types I "should" be using, or to figure out if I am or am not hitting, and am or am not doing damage.  It should be relatively easy to understand and see.  Did I make a fighter?  Did I give him the stats that should make him effective?  Is he using the right type of weapon?  Done.  No more analysis required.  I never have played another RPG where I was unaware of whether what I was doing was effective or not, and couldn't intuitively sense that in the game and make the necessary adjustments to be more effective.  I've read tons of threads about how to "best" build your character and frankly still don't understand.  If I play this time and feel like my character is ineffective when they should be effective, I will stop playing and not come back.  I shouldn't have to read the manual for hours just to build an effective character- not talking god-like, effective.

[Infinitron]

Intelligence, Charisma, Wisdom

 

 

 I understood why to put points in those things or not

 

O rly

[Loren Tyr]

I'm not sure I see how the PoE stats are less intuitive than those of BG et al. The three physical ones and Intellect are basically the same, Perception and Resolve take the place of Wisdom and Charisma. They're different, but you hardly need have swallowed a dictionary to have a reasonable sense of what it means to be perceptive or lacking in resolve, I'd think. They're hardly more esoteric than being wise or charismatic. And from a mechanical/gameplay perspective you need to know the actual effects they have in either case, that's not something you can really deduce anyway. The main difference is that in PoE the stats are much better balanced, you have no real dumpstats the way you had in BG/IWD.

 

But yeah, in other respects PoE is a more mechanically complex and diverse game. You can't just go on intuition alone, if you want something like that then I suppose an action RPG would be more your thing? Though I don't see how different enemies and armour types having different strengths and weaknesses is such a counter-intuitive thing. Of course mail armour is good against slashing attacks, that's what it's designed for. And warhammers in turn were designed to skip the hassle of having to get through the mail armor and just do damage directly to the squishy meat underneath, the stuff really was historically weaker against that kind of (focused) blunt attack. 

[demeisen]

​

If I play this time and feel like my character is ineffective when they should be effective, I will stop playing and not come back.  I shouldn't have to read the manual for hours just to build an effective character- not talking god-like, effective.

 

You can pretty much distribute your attribute points evenly (12 to every stat, or whatever it turns out to be) and have an effective character - not god-like, but effective - for any difficulty level including PotD.  Bias it a few points to what makes intuitive sense (int for casters, con for tanks, etc), or just follow the "recommended stats" when creating the character, and you'll do even better.  Again not godlike, but more than adequate.

​

​To really put a spit-polish on it, sure, you must look deeper.  But at least there is something deeper, which not a thing to be said about most modern games which have gone through endless simplification cycles in the quest to recoup their hundred million dollar development budgets.  ​May PoE never go there.  It's sitting in a sweet spot: enough audience to fund a professional development staff, but not so much that it's compelled to chase the LCD.

​

​

[pi2repsion]

I definitely agree on the lack of silly characters; Silliness can be hit and miss, which is why including mandatory silly characters can be troublesome, but optional ones to lighten the tone of the game if the player is interested in that - definitely a good idea, so long as it is something that fits into the setting.

 

Looking back at the Infinity Engine games, some of the silly NPCs come up as amongst the best beloved whenever polls are made - others, not as much. As an example, the talking sword Lilarcor or Noober might come across as a one-trick ponies (and nothing wrong with that; if optional content amuses you in just one playthrough, it has already done its job), but ask yourself this, what would the Baldur's Gate series have been without Minsc and Boo? Or Planescape: Torment without Morte?

 

Still great games, in all likelihood, but they'd have lost some of the charm: The innate silliness of these characters combined with their reasonable combat effectiveness appealed to many players, and they combined very well in party interactions with both straight-laced, silly, and playful NPC companions.

 

Another that is frequently named from Baldur's Gate is Edwin and for much the same reason.

 

There were many other silly companions around; Xzar and Montaron from BG1 come to mind as a less popular straight/silly pairing, and for pure silly insanity in voice lines BG1's Tiax is hard is hard to beat. Though arguably the fabulous Jan Jansen from Baldur's Gate II does make a credible effort in that direction - he also has some of the most absurd dialogue interactions with other companions. (E.g. some of Jan Jansen's interactions).

 

And, of course, Imoen the eternal child, who in Baldur's Gate II played foil to both straight-laced and silly characters in companion dialogues - making some players hate her and others love her.

 

 

Contrast Pillars of Eternity - it suffers from a bad case of BioWare disease which afflicted so many BioWare NPCs 2004-2016 by making them emotionally damaged gloomy buggers with a troubled past. Having too many of those around is every bit as bad as having too many silly characters around.

 

When the top of silliness in companions is Kana Rua, a serious scholar whose inherent silliness has more to do with his playful approach to the world, there's a lot of room for improvement in that regard.

 

To make it even worse, the companion-to-companion interactions (as opposed to player to companion) were played as sound snippets in the background, which ensured they had to be brief, typically AB or ABA structured. That severely restricted the possibilities for both serious and silly inter-party debates.

 

So, yes. There's a lot of room for improvement in that regard.

Edited August 23, 2016 by pi2repsion

[Loren Tyr]

I'd say the characters in PoE were hardly that gloomy, and many had more light-hearted remarks and such as well (Edér with is animal obsession, for example). And while I would have no problem with some characters being more light-hearted in general (a cheerful Imoen type, say), it does have to fit the tone and theme of the game as a whole, and they do have to remain more or less believable characters. The BG series was never very good at this in my view, personalities were generally quite two-dimensional (or absent altogether, in BG1) and/or completely over the top, with some pantomime villains thrown in for good measure. This can be good for a chuckle (Minsc, Jan Jansen, Edwin), but it is hardly immersive. It comes off more as a sketch, to be honest; for the most part, I never got the feeling there was a genuine personality and story there for many of those NPCs, something to get remotely invested in; just the cardboard cut-out of some particular trope. And that's the kind of thing that 'silly' evokes for me, and it isn't particularly appealing. 

 

Morte in PS:T on the other hand, always felt much more like a genuine character. The notion of a sentient floating skull may sound silly out of context, but it fits the game very well, and he was much better developed overall than almost all of the BG1/2 characters (though that applies to the PS:T characters in general, if some more than others). In the strange world of PS:T, he's hardly out of place.

[Infinitron]

It's a bit strange to refer to something that Black Isle and Obsidian always did more than BioWare as "BioWare disease".

Edited August 23, 2016 by Infinitron

[kanisatha]

To make it even worse, the companion-to-companion interactions (as opposed to player to companion) were played as sound snippets in the background, which ensured they had to be brief, typically AB or ABA structured. That severely restricted the possibilities for both serious and silly inter-party debates.

This is a very major issue for someone like me who has a hearing disability, not deaf but uses a hearing aid and has great difficulty following speech and especially electronic speech. Those background comments don't show up on CC or the little window thing and so I don't get to enjoy them at all. I hope PoE2 will do a better job of setting up all audio elements in the game to be accessible to hearing impaired fans.