Remove Restrictions and let this game breath

[Wormerine]

Also, PoE has pre-buffing: food. And, this gives you a "straight stat bump". Eating food in PoE is a no-brainer. Why does this get a pass? (this argument is weaker, and can probably be stressed enough)

 

Does it get a pass? Never used food pre-buff unless I felt I had to. It was a boring, fiddly process which didn’t bring any depth nor interesting choices to the game. And that’s why I am happy to see in repurposed for an anti-too-much-resting-system for Deadfire.

[daven]

Having to equip and use food was such a hassle that I never did it.

 

ONLY had beer on my main guy because... it's beer.

[Lord_Mord]

 

Pick locks, pass speech check, kill everyone, pickpocket key, bribe anything you want. Cool. It’s not Baldur’s Gate.

 

That's exactly the way I played BG. I agree that the game not always allowed that and probably wasn't designed that way, but oftentimes it worked. As a kid i understood this game in a sandbox way. My hope was, that PoE would find some in-between-sollution and they kind of did. But I would still like to have more creative, not predefined options.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Lord_Mord

[Barleypaper]

@Barleypaper

 

i disagree personally. I think its a step in the right direction and i do agree with Sawyer that large power-gaps are undesirable especially if you consider the point of view of the designer (though i dislike them even as a player). You go to all this trouble to design 12 classes and you end up with 80% of the playerbase playing 3 or them... how is that good design? Might as well only have those 3 OP classes and be done with it. Moreover, without previous knowledge of which classes are super powerful and which are sub-par you punish the players (especially those that are just starting with the game) for a choice they made at the start if/when they end up being stuck due to a sub-par choice. In BG1's expansion (SoD) there was an encounter where the "good" choice was to have a one on one duel with some celestial lieutenant of Caelar Argent... the difficulty varied greatly based on which class the protagonist chose. A new player who chose the "wrong" class would get stuck there or alternatively would be obligated to make a choice that may not be in character for his protagonist... or ofc he could downgrade the difficulty (if possible) which would enhance the feeling that his character is weak even further ... either way you detract from their fun and punish them for what is essentially bad design (imho). Going further from this idea, there is a potential consequence even for a seasoned player who for instance would want to complete the game on PotD in that he might be/feel pigeonholed into selecting from a very limited class pool which again hurts his enjoyment of the game...

I don't disagree, in essence. The point I'm trying to make is that what you see as bad design, I see as simply different design. To give an example: I enjoy playing the "weaker" classes in IE games precisely because they are weaker; it poses a unique challenge.

 

Baldur’s Gate is a compilation of heavily directed quests with clear “conversation, combat, exploration” parts. Your class doesn’t influence story nor world. Your skills rarely are useful outside combat (with few exceptions I will get into that) - an example I can think of is in BG2 during troll siege of a keep you can mindcontrol an NPC in order to avoiding killing him. Baldur’s Gate did have spells handy outside of combat and I did really liked those - unlocking doors, finding traps, wish. Those were really really good and I those non combat abilities would be welcome addition to PoE. It’s poorer for lack of those.

 

But Baldur’s Gate wasn’t a sandbox in which you created your stories. You were a participant in a story told to you by GM. You enter the room and there is combat. After combat your search for clues. You find a blooded green piece of cloth. You confront NPC dressed in green. He is an archmage. You can accept a bribe or report him to authorities. You threaten to report him and tough combat ensues ending the quest. That was the innovation of BG and its influence (to some extend detrimental) to RPGs. Better paced stories, giving your character set motivation with film worthy villains and characters. Reputation system was basic (and heavily unbalanced toward good players - try playing selfish or neutral character and you won’t find quests to complete), ability to interact with the world minimal. And with this design big power gap is an issue. You want to confront a character against some easier mobs and than a big baddy. A dragon or a powerful NPC you have been chasing for a long time. You want it to be a big epic battle which will work as a grand finale of a quest. How do you make that happen if player can just spend couple minutes before combat and make himself invincible? Ironicus fight anyone?

 

So you see, I see Pillars as a true spiritual successor of BG. They expand strengths of the game - it’s more interactive and reactive. Your character stats and abilities have influence in conversations and scripted interactions while in BG they would be relevant in combat only. You have more choices when it comes to quests and game supports a wider range of characters to role play as (as opposed to Bioware good, evil guy). With pickpocketing and better stealth we might even see a bit of fluid quest design in PoE2. But it’s not a “sandbox RPG” just like BG never was one. Which is ok. We can have both.

 

Yes, I suppose I agree. BG was not a sandbox and combat was a big focus. For the most part, I wouldn't argue that PoE fails at being a spiritual successor. I'll also repeat that I don't actualy want pre-buffing, I'd just like people to stop ragging on it so hard. This topic isn't even about pre-buffing.

 

I'll also state this: IE games all had a bunch of restrictions, too. I can't be a dwarf druid? I can't make friends with the umber hulks? Laaame.

 

Restrictions are the essence of games, it's literally what they're made of. I just think PoE is leaning a little bit hard on the combat balance angle, at the moment.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Barleypaper

[Barleypaper]

 

Also, PoE has pre-buffing: food. And, this gives you a "straight stat bump". Eating food in PoE is a no-brainer. Why does this get a pass? (this argument is weaker, and can probably be stressed enough)

Does it get a pass? Never used food pre-buff unless I felt I had to. It was a boring, fiddly process which didn’t bring any depth nor interesting choices to the game. And that’s why I am happy to see in repurposed for an anti-too-much-resting-system for Deadfire.

 

Honestly, if I was designing this game, I would remove all bland stat bumps. Food, potions, in-combat buffs, the lot. I don't buy the argument that "opportunity cost" makes such bonuses interesting in combat, either. +2 strength is never interesting me, except maybe as a permanent weapon effect. Even then, I'd prefer something more interesting, the effect of which I can actually notice and appreciate.

[Wormerine]

Honestly, if I was designing this game, I would remove all bland stat bumps. Food, potions, in-combat buffs, the lot. I don't buy the argument that "opportunity cost" makes such bonuses interesting in combat, either. +2 strength is never interesting me, except maybe as a permanent weapon effect. Even then, I'd prefer something more interesting, the effect of which I can actually notice and appreciate.

Ah, that is another topic. Changes to number and statistic aren’t all at exciting in an electronic game, where those calculations are happening “under the hood”. Adding +2 after doing physical roll of dice doesn’t have the same impact when those things are done for you. I think Deadfire made a step in a right direction by unifying a lot of statistics between classes and trying to differentiate them through active abilities. It reminds me of Tim Cain’s talk that was posted a while ago on these forums. An example he gave was shotgun: rather than increasing base damage of a shotgun you can allow player to upgrade recoil control. That way shotgun doesn’t magically do more damage, but you still increase DPS fulfilling same design role, while feeling more natural to the player.

[Jojobobo]

I just want to say I think restrictions are great in an RPG. I know this thread became very quickly about pre-buffing, but I agree that giving buffing a time cost in combat makes it more of a tactical choice - and so to me that's better. In PoE 1 you can use food to pre-buff, and in PoE 2 I think that's now involved in resting bonuses or something? In any case, the decision to make buffing happen during an encounter or before is an arbitrary one. You can argue that logically if someone can cast a buffing spell then they should be able to pre-buff, but by the same dint maybe they need the adrenaline to work effectively - so you can't slice it down on a purely logical basis and as I said it is truly an arbitrary dev choice.

 

From my perspective, recently I played Skyrim, and it's good - but it gets a little dull fairly fast. I think it's a great ARPG but still the game is fundamentally lacking in restrictions, and while it's good as an open world sandbox and some of the key dungeons and visuals are great there's not enough of the those set pieces to make it really juicy. At the same time if you were to pack a game with colorful dungeons and set pieces, it feels a little forced. Ultimately the lack of a restrictive RPG elements means it lacks a challenge.

 

Then I went back and played Arcanum, and it's full of restrictions. You can't have a both a Magick and Tech character, you have to pick one or the other, and a lot of the racial differentiations are meaningful, particularly when you stack them on a huge array of backgrounds that also have mechanical impact. Character point allocation is also capped and slow to progress, meaning you have to have be sensible with your choices. At the same time, it's fundamentally classless system - so really all the restrictions are those imposed by the setting and a reasonably well pitched levelling system, but it's easy to see the possibilities are huge and only more interesting because of those confines.

 

Arcanum thrives on its restrictions, as does PoE 1, yet something like Skyrim doesn't have those and as long as you sink the time in you'll get there. So yes I'll always go feet first into an RPG with restrictions, heaps of them, because for me that makes for rigorous and challenging gameplay. Not looking to change the status quo just because it's the status quo (e.g. pre-buffing) isn't a good mindset to have when making such an RPG.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Arddv]

Very interesting discussion that was iterated times and times again on different gaming forums for as long as PC gaming exists.

 

Basically there is one 'parent' dichotomy and numbers of sub-dichotomies that spawn from it. The main question is: 'Should the game be an emergent thing-in-itself that gamer dives into to extract whatever experience he wants, or should the game designer decide what experience and when is delivered'.

 

The games of first type are redundant, unbalanced, require lots of resources to produce, require player to spend lots of time to immerse, to gain metagaming knowledge, and often fail commercially. Second type of games are easy to produce, easy to consume and easy to sell.

 

To find balance here is hard. These different types of games even target differet 'gaming needs' and while I was absolutely fascinated with IE games when I was 12, now I can't bring myself to starting, say, Divinity series, as it will require the efforts/time I cannot spend on gaming.

 

As much as I would love PoE series to go all-in emergent and complex wordlbuilding and mechanics-crafting I understand that I simply won't have time for all this undoubtly marvelous experience. So compromises need to be made. PoE hit the spot for me, PoE2 seems to go overboard judging by beta feedback (too streamlined and spoon-fed) but we'll see.

[Wormerine]

PoE hit the spot for me, PoE2 seems to go overboard judging by beta feedback (too streamlined and spoon-fed) but we'll see.

I wouldn’t worry about “Deadfire” getting dummed down. Obsidian has already responded to some of the concerns, and even now system isn’t nearly as restrictive as it seemed at first. Comparing it to Tyranny or DA:O is just not accurate. While I prefer old health/endurance system the new injury system does pretty much the same thing but with clearer UI. Frankly as it is right now, it looks pretty solid and I hope it will get better throughout beta.

[Gregorovitch]

 

If you allow prebuffing you must balance for prebuffing, and then all players must prebuff. So there is no more choice than before, only hassle.

Allowing something doesn't mean it is required.

 

In the case of prebuffing, yes it does. As has already been explianed to you sevveral times in the thread:

 

* if a game is designed to allow prebuffing then the encounters have to be balanced on thre assumption the player had prebuffed their party, i.e. they must be harder.

* if a player then does not prebuff then they will find the encounters extremely difficult or even impossible to win

* therefore all players will have to go through a prebuffing rigmarole prior to every single encounter which is incredibly tedious and adds exactly nothing to gameeplay.

 

In addition to this alowing prebuffing removes a significant element of tactical depth from the game as you no longer have to decide between casting buffs or casting debuff/offensive spells in battle.

 

You are persiting with an arguement you cannot win here.

 

[esyvjrt]

Leaving the mechanical reasons and problems, if there is a way to solve that feeling of arbitrary and artificial restriction it would be great

Outside combat buffs being weaker, putting the ability in combat on cooldown, spending more points, for those who doesn't use meta-knowledge maybe allowing it as a option... i don't know.

Edited November 26, 2017 by esyvjrt

[Katarack21]

 

Honestly, if I was designing this game, I would remove all bland stat bumps. Food, potions, in-combat buffs, the lot. I don't buy the argument that "opportunity cost" makes such bonuses interesting in combat, either. +2 strength is never interesting me, except maybe as a permanent weapon effect. Even then, I'd prefer something more interesting, the effect of which I can actually notice and appreciate.

Ah, that is another topic. Changes to number and statistic aren’t all at exciting in an electronic game, where those calculations are happening “under the hood”. Adding +2 after doing physical roll of dice doesn’t have the same impact when those things are done for you. I think Deadfire made a step in a right direction by unifying a lot of statistics between classes and trying to differentiate them through active abilities. It reminds me of Tim Cain’s talk that was posted a while ago on these forums. An example he gave was shotgun: rather than increasing base damage of a shotgun you can allow player to upgrade recoil control. That way shotgun doesn’t magically do more damage, but you still increase DPS fulfilling same design role, while feeling more natural to the player.

 

 The corollary to that is that in a game like PoE where the actual actions taken are automatic and I just tell the characters to do it, something like a damage bonus is much easier to see and feel the impact of with every use of that weapon. If I was aiming and dealing with the effects of using the weapon directly, it would be a different story.

 

Something like straight stat bonuses are much more impactful in a game like BG2, where the strength does more than just effect damage and scripted events but directly impacts the player themselves through the inventory, something like Oblivion where your dex impacts how high you can jump. Similarly, although the bow you get in WM 2 produces it's own ammo, not having ammo in the game means that magical ability doesn't have any impact, while the bows that produced their own ammo in the BG games were *amazing*.

 

The coolest items in PoE are the items that have unique spell effects or abilities attached to them. Things like summoning skeletons, or overbearing wave when critically hit, or making you frenzy. But each of those requires it be made special by the coders, doesn't it?

[Goddard]

 

 

Honestly, if I was designing this game, I would remove all bland stat bumps. Food, potions, in-combat buffs, the lot. I don't buy the argument that "opportunity cost" makes such bonuses interesting in combat, either. +2 strength is never interesting me, except maybe as a permanent weapon effect. Even then, I'd prefer something more interesting, the effect of which I can actually notice and appreciate.

Ah, that is another topic. Changes to number and statistic aren’t all at exciting in an electronic game, where those calculations are happening “under the hood”. Adding +2 after doing physical roll of dice doesn’t have the same impact when those things are done for you. I think Deadfire made a step in a right direction by unifying a lot of statistics between classes and trying to differentiate them through active abilities. It reminds me of Tim Cain’s talk that was posted a while ago on these forums. An example he gave was shotgun: rather than increasing base damage of a shotgun you can allow player to upgrade recoil control. That way shotgun doesn’t magically do more damage, but you still increase DPS fulfilling same design role, while feeling more natural to the player.

 

 The corollary to that is that in a game like PoE where the actual actions taken are automatic and I just tell the characters to do it, something like a damage bonus is much easier to see and feel the impact of with every use of that weapon. If I was aiming and dealing with the effects of using the weapon directly, it would be a different story.

 

Something like straight stat bonuses are much more impactful in a game like BG2, where the strength does more than just effect damage and scripted events but directly impacts the player themselves through the inventory, something like Oblivion where your dex impacts how high you can jump. Similarly, although the bow you get in WM 2 produces it's own ammo, not having ammo in the game means that magical ability doesn't have any impact, while the bows that produced their own ammo in the BG games were *amazing*.

 

The coolest items in PoE are the items that have unique spell effects or abilities attached to them. Things like summoning skeletons, or overbearing wave when critically hit, or making you frenzy. But each of those requires it be made special by the coders, doesn't it?

 

 

That is what I enjoy the most.  I enjoy trying a lot of different strategies and creating my own challenges.  Also with the items I really prefer strategically placed items with cool effects.  

 

I really hate random item systems and crafting.  Crafting by going to a special NPC to piece together an epic weapon is fun to me because I like the story.

 

You have to walk a fine line in my opinion between trying to control things and also allowing enough variation.

 

The main issue with not allowing pre-buffing is you NEVER need to go into combat worried.  

 

Instead of changing your spell book, or altering spells cast so they last longer, or casting some short lasting spells at the right moments versus walking into every battle knowing it is "challenging" enough where you never have to be prepared before hand.  You walk through the entire game and all the encounters are "balanced" and "controlled".

 

It pretty clearly reduces the variation of encounters. 

 

Alternatively, yes it probably makes it easier to manage encounters and yes some people will meta game otherwise.  Some people will role play.  Some people will just take it easy.  Removing restrictions to me means let the world be what it is and then let people play it in interesting ways.  You can still make fights challenging as BG2 is evidence of.

 

Playing games is about how you feel while playing it.

 

In BG you are empowered with little limitations.  I would say one limitation that is funny is having to gather your party before venturing forth, but hey... :D

 

In a dangerous world combat is always a possibility and you need to be prepared at all times.  At least in the Forgotten Realms.

 

In PoE the world isn't dangerous until you take out your pokey ball and start combat with your harry potter wizard wand....haha jk

 

 

Ok in all seriousness, lets take the twitter post by Mr. Sawyer who I respect, but just disagree with.

 

He gives an example of a gif image where the "player" repeatedly casts spells on himself.  First it is an exaggeration for humor I get it, but with proper A.I. this is solved.

 

EXAMPLE #1

Give certain enemies intelligence ratings

Give certain buffing spells a hostility counter ( so a global variable of some sort in the world on your character / party that is player_hostility_check += 1 )

If the player raises over that hostility counter based on the enemies intelligence of what is occurring then make the enemy freak out on the player.

 

It is like in this game you want to remove things, but add nothing cool that makes the game more intelligent.  

 

When you walk into a house and steal something and a person is standing by you they might go agro.

 

Why not expand on those checks?  Make more of them.    Add more variation.  I know it makes things more complicated, but I think the PoE team can do it.

[Pandemic Legion]

I had no time to read the previous pages.

Im against restrictions how about to make prebuff a diffuculty think or the player can toggle it.

[Pandemic Legion]

It bothers me so hard this "Combat only" restricting complex i agree with you @Goddard.

[Lephys]

Different people have different, equally valid, views on what is and is not fun. Because fun is subjective. This should go without saying.

 

This argument is so, so overused. Great fact. How does that help us? Fun is subjective, so everything is correct? So game designers should just do ALL things? Nothing is wrong, because nothing is not fun to someone.

 

News flash... getting stabbed in the leg is subjectively fun to some people. Objectively, we know it to be fun for very few people. There's probably a reason for that. There are very few things that we form opinions about that aren't based on some kind of objective reasoning to arrive at that opinion. What's your favorite color? That's probably purely subjective, as it's basically happenstance that your brain prefers one color over others. But, what's the best way to design system X? That's partially subjective, but largely ob-jective. There are core values for everyone's opinion of gameplay. Puzzle games and fighting games are "completely" different, yet people still want the same basic principle of challenge out of both.

 

So, if you want a pure simulation, that's fine. You can want that. But you can't want a game that's about a story at its core, but then is also about simulation at its core. One has to support the other.

 

Basically, people can make a game that's about your favorite color, OR they can make a game that's about something else, in which your favorite color will not be the only color used because different color choice better served the goal of the game's design.

 

Very few people subjectively like the idea of losing in a game. However, they tend to like the idea of winning in a game -- of overcoming something. By the very nature of this, the ability to fail to overcome something must be in the game, or you don't have a non-overcoming state, and therefore do not have an overcoming state, either.

 

So, that's fantastic that fun is subjective. But the world runs on objectivity. Subjectivity is just some randomized variables thrown in that we have to deal with. You can't make a whole game based on subjectivity. "How much health should this guy have? I dunno... I like the number 7 billion. So he'll have that much health."

 

What he was saying was that you can't have simulation just because you like it. That's not a good enough reason to put simulation mechanics into a game. They have to have an objective reason for being in the game, within the context of the rest of the game.

[Lephys]

Ok in all seriousness, lets take the twitter post by Mr. Sawyer who I respect, but just disagree with.

He gives an example of a gif image where the "player" repeatedly casts spells on himself.  First it is an exaggeration for humor I get it, but with proper A.I. this is solved.

 

EXAMPLE #1

Give certain enemies intelligence ratings

Give certain buffing spells a hostility counter ( so a global variable of some sort in the world on your character / party that is player_hostility_check += 1 )

If the player raises over that hostility counter based on the enemies intelligence of what is occurring then make the enemy freak out on the player.

 

It is like in this game you want to remove things, but add nothing cool that makes the game more intelligent.

 

So, are you suggesting that the enemies should just all detect magic being cast outside of their range of vision/hearing and come running to attack you if you try to prebuff before entering a combat scenario?

 

The problems with your "solution" aside, your entire argument is about how restricting buffing is fundamentally bad for the game, but when confronted with the problems pre-buffing introduces (which you've finally, finally directly addressed here in the quoted portion), your solution is to make the pre-buffing okay by restricting it with some kind of hostility threshold? Do you not understand what people have been saying this entire time?

[Wormerine]

 

Ok in all seriousness, lets take the twitter post by Mr. Sawyer who I respect, but just disagree with.

He gives an example of a gif image where the "player" repeatedly casts spells on himself.  First it is an exaggeration for humor I get it, but with proper A.I. this is solved.

 

EXAMPLE #1

Give certain enemies intelligence ratings

Give certain buffing spells a hostility counter ( so a global variable of some sort in the world on your character / party that is player_hostility_check += 1 )

If the player raises over that hostility counter based on the enemies intelligence of what is occurring then make the enemy freak out on the player.

 

It is like in this game you want to remove things, but add nothing cool that makes the game more intelligent.

 

So, are you suggesting that the enemies should just all detect magic being cast outside of their range of vision/hearing and come running to attack you if you try to prebuff before entering a combat scenario?

 

The problems with your "solution" aside, your entire argument is about how restricting buffing is fundamentally bad for the game, but when confronted with the problems pre-buffing introduces (which you've finally, finally directly addressed here in the quoted portion), your solution is to make the pre-buffing okay by restricting it with some kind of hostility threshold? Do you not understand what people have been saying this entire time?

 

I think what Goddard wishes to see (and please, correct me if I am wrong) is a game, which focuses on mechanical simulation of the world, and which pushes simulation, AI reaction further than what BG did 20 years ago. He wants to have access to unrestricted system and see game react to it in a more realistic way. I do think it is a bit of a pipe dream. Technology got better, but not nearly better to simulate human reaction. Just like with graphics, the closer system comes to behaving like intelligent person the more weird and noticable it becomes. 

 

It would be nice to have NPC react in a believable way, when you create mayhem, or steal. In his example enemy NPC would try to run away if you are too powerful (or prebuffed) rather than run at you and die. I think what he wants is a game, which will give him some of the awe BG gave years ago. Personally, to me that was Witcher 3. As far as simulaton is concerned Space Citizen seems to have those ambitions with "intelligent" systems, and "believable" AI behaviour and entire economy running. And that's sad. I would be completely happy with solid single player campaign. If we ever see it released I doubt it will be any good. Though I still hope something good will come out of it.

[injurai]

A fully responsive and dynamic world would surely force the game away from Isometric, unless we are talking more of responsive in the "rp" sense.

 

Either way, making things more responsive just means creating more systems, and more content that hooks into those systems. To make things interesting and non-repetitive instances of these systems need to be somewhat custom and bespoke. I think we already see this with the systems that are in place, and certainly I'd love to see a lot more mundane and trivial stuff added to the world, if only to flesh it out.

 

To really have a universal simulation game, It would take years of building on subsystems to a core franchise over a number of installments. I think the best we should be asking for is a solid attempt at incrementalism.

[Barleypaper]

 

Different people have different, equally valid, views on what is and is not fun. Because fun is subjective. This should go without saying.

 

This argument is so, so overused. Great fact. How does that help us? Fun is subjective, so everything is correct? So game designers should just do ALL things? Nothing is wrong, because nothing is not fun to someone.

 

News flash... getting stabbed in the leg is subjectively fun to some people. Objectively, we know it to be fun for very few people. There's probably a reason for that. There are very few things that we form opinions about that aren't based on some kind of objective reasoning to arrive at that opinion. What's your favorite color? That's probably purely subjective, as it's basically happenstance that your brain prefers one color over others. But, what's the best way to design system X? That's partially subjective, but largely ob-jective. There are core values for everyone's opinion of gameplay. Puzzle games and fighting games are "completely" different, yet people still want the same basic principle of challenge out of both.

 

So, if you want a pure simulation, that's fine. You can want that. But you can't want a game that's about a story at its core, but then is also about simulation at its core. One has to support the other.

 

Basically, people can make a game that's about your favorite color, OR they can make a game that's about something else, in which your favorite color will not be the only color used because different color choice better served the goal of the game's design.

 

Very few people subjectively like the idea of losing in a game. However, they tend to like the idea of winning in a game -- of overcoming something. By the very nature of this, the ability to fail to overcome something must be in the game, or you don't have a non-overcoming state, and therefore do not have an overcoming state, either.

 

So, that's fantastic that fun is subjective. But the world runs on objectivity. Subjectivity is just some randomized variables thrown in that we have to deal with. You can't make a whole game based on subjectivity. "How much health should this guy have? I dunno... I like the number 7 billion. So he'll have that much health."

 

What he was saying was that you can't have simulation just because you like it. That's not a good enough reason to put simulation mechanics into a game. They have to have an objective reason for being in the game, within the context of the rest of the game.

 

Some people do like getting stabbed in the leg. You can make a game about that.

 

I will concede, however, that it is a mostly pointless argument. Obviously, you generally do not want your design choices to be arbitrary. But everybody here is backing up their arguments with some kind of logic so that's not a problem.

 

"What he was saying was that you can't have simulation just because you like it"

 

Yes, and I disagree.

 

But I don't need to convince anybody of that. I'm only protesting the shift in design philosophy away from the IE forumula that PoE is, supposedly, a spiritual successor to. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Edited November 28, 2017 by Barleypaper

[Wormerine]

 

But I don't need to convince anybody of that. I'm only protesting the shift in design philosophy away from the IE forumula that PoE is, supposedly, a spiritual successor to. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

But what is this supposed shift in design philosophy? You keep talking as if BG was the big, open, interactive game while it was a complete opposite compared to RPGs that came before. KOTOR didn’t change design philosophy, Mass Effect didn’t change design philosophy. They all strived to do the same thing - somewhat interactive tight, well paced stories, with better and better visual presentation and mechanics to boost said story. Did I like BG more than those titles? Yes, but not because Bioware’s ideology has changed, but because BG was this odd child of niche RPGs trying to reach out to mass market. Later games they further distilled what people cared about and didn’t care about. At some point they become games I didn’t care about that much. But it was always what those games were. I wasn’t happy when Mass Effect2 became more of an action game than an RPG. But that was what Mass Effect really WAS. It was a hybrid marrying RPG with 3rd person action game. If, like me, you liked RPG elements... that’s cool but they didn’t really work in ME favour. Feel the same about BG and PoE. PoE gets rid of things which BG had due to it being an early adaptation of paper RPGs, but which didn’t work well with what BG was trying to be. If you want more of an unrestricted do-what-you-want-RPG, think Divinity2 is more like that (can’t say, didnt play it yet, but it seems to be going for it).

 

I love Pulp Fiction and dislike later Tarantino movies. Not because he has changed but because I don’t really like what he goes for. As he kept pushing the envelope he lost me, while Pulp Fiction’s early, more quirky than shocking, Tarantino worked for me really well.

[daven]

Mass Effect 2 oddly enough has the tightest story and best characters.

[Lephys]

"What he was saying was that you can't have simulation just because you like it"

 

Yes, and I disagree.

 

Fair enough. I take my thoughts for granted sometimes. What I mean is, you cannot have the goal of making a game that isn't fundamentally about simulation for its own sake, and within that game, include piecemeal systems that simulate for their own sake, AND have a successful game.

 

You can do anything. Some people will like it no matter what. But, well, even with that... let's just say that sometimes its wrong for humans to like things. The best example I can give is that small children might like to eat nothing but M&Ms all the time, but they simultaneously don't like dying from malnutrition and diabetes. So, their liking of M&Ms has to be tempered with reason, or it produces a measurably opposite effect.

 

Obviously game systems aren't going to give anyone diabetes, and we're not all small children. But, sometimes, our desires become irrationally ignorant of reason, and we want things purely because we can't be bothered with fully considering the consequences of those things, even when the consequences are things we ultimately don't like. Kids think "Mmmm, candy is delicious! I want to taste the candy!", and they don't think past that. And sometimes, we do the same thing with game systems. "I don't care, this is fun, so I just want to do that in-game." We don't really care what it impacts in the grand scheme of things, because typing/reading through multi-page threads on forums about this stuff is not everyone's cup of tea. And that's understandable. That's just being human.

 

But, part of being human is the fact that we have the ability to essentially circumvent our base reactions to things in the interest of ultimately achieving even more desirable long-term results. We're the only animals that can do that. We're still animals, and we still have reactions. And that's not wrong. But, ignoring consideration and reason in favor of our initial reactive impulses simply does us no good.

 

Subjectivity is great, but it is secondary to objectivity.

[Wormerine]

Mass Effect 2 oddly enough has the tightest story and best characters.

It’s as if making game more open and giving players more influence over the story makes it more difficult to write coherent and fluid narrative and characters. One of the reasons fallout1&2, while great, don’t have particularly engaging plot or deep interaction with characters (narrative wise). That’s also possibly highlighting a huge storytelling issue games have aka. Relaying on storytelling techniques of other mediums (films, books etc.) rather than developing their own. As it happens Mass Effect2 is also a pretty good example of that - storytelling comes from writing and movie-like cutscene/conversation direction while actual gameplay feels more like in between distraction or a smokescreen (dialogue). Pretty much the reason why Brothers: Tale of Two Sons is so extraordinary using gameplay as primary medium of communication.

Edited November 28, 2017 by Wormerine

[Barleypaper]

 

 

But I don't need to convince anybody of that. I'm only protesting the shift in design philosophy away from the IE forumula that PoE is, supposedly, a spiritual successor to. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

But what is this supposed shift in design philosophy? You keep talking as if BG was the big, open, interactive game while it was a complete opposite compared to RPGs that came before. KOTOR didn’t change design philosophy, Mass Effect didn’t change design philosophy. They all strived to do the same thing - somewhat interactive tight, well paced stories, with better and better visual presentation and mechanics to boost said story. Did I like BG more than those titles? Yes, but not because Bioware’s ideology has changed, but because BG was this odd child of niche RPGs trying to reach out to mass market. Later games they further distilled what people cared about and didn’t care about. At some point they become games I didn’t care about that much. But it was always what those games were. I wasn’t happy when Mass Effect2 became more of an action game than an RPG. But that was what Mass Effect really WAS. It was a hybrid marrying RPG with 3rd person action game. If, like me, you liked RPG elements... that’s cool but they didn’t really work in ME favour. Feel the same about BG and PoE. PoE gets rid of things which BG had due to it being an early adaptation of paper RPGs, but which didn’t work well with what BG was trying to be. If you want more of an unrestricted do-what-you-want-RPG, think Divinity2 is more like that (can’t say, didnt play it yet, but it seems to be going for it).

 

I love Pulp Fiction and dislike later Tarantino movies. Not because he has changed but because I don’t really like what he goes for. As he kept pushing the envelope he lost me, while Pulp Fiction’s early, more quirky than shocking, Tarantino worked for me really well.

 

PoE took the concept of BG and played around with it a bit; added features, removed mechanics, tweaked the setting, etc. Broadly, the design goal is the same: make a decently interactive, reactive, open-ish world, linearly told, dungeon crawley type RPG/RTS thing. But it's clear to me that they're not the same game. And I don't think they're even trying to be.

 

You use the mainline Bioware RPGs as an example of how design philosophy can remain consistent across franchises. But I don't think that's applicable here. Would you say, for instance, that Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate had the same design goals? What about BG vs Planescape: Torment? All 3 of these games used the same engine, as well as most of the same mechanics. But none of them felt the same, to me at least. I think that this is also true for PoE; it's its own, unique experience with its own style and set of "restrictions", just like BG2.

 

Now, that's fine. Good, even. Except that, as Lephys says: it's not enough to just be different, you also have to know what you're doing and do it well. The primary point of contention, for me, is that I disagree with a lot of what Josh Sawyer has to say about designing games. I think that some of the ideas he has, while well argued and "innovative", are detrimental to my experience to the degree that I am contemplating whether this game is ever going to really suit me. Which, again, is fine. If enough people like the kind of game PoE is, that's enough of a reason for it to continue existing, intact.