Josh Sawyer's tweets and teasers, part IV

[Wormerine]

On 2/19/2020 at 10:19 AM, Lord_Mord said:

I don't think that's true. If that game would not conclude the watchers story, I wouldnt buy it and if someone else would make that game, I wouldn't buy it either.

I wouldn't go that far, but it is Josh's particular sensibilities and interests which made PoE what it is. I would be interested in seeing what PoE under his full control would look like, and I would be interested in seeing what a new lead would do with the game - I did enjoy all three DLCs after all.

What I am not terribly interested in, is a non-isometric PoE. The world doesn't have that much appeal to me, to automatically transfer my interest in PoE3 into another genre - it would need to sell me on the concept mostly from the ground up... that being said, being made by Obsidian is, for now, still a good start. 

[Lord_Mord]

Quote

it is Josh's particular sensibilities and interests which made PoE what it is

Exactly!

[Skazz]

I miss Josh.

[Boeroer]

 

[kanisatha]

Maybe we should send him a "Hope you feel better soon" card.

[Boeroer]

It was a single class Bloodmage by the way.

[Wormerine]

If someone what curious what Josh's position as Studio Design Director entails:
https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/625579436746702848/the-job-of-a-studio-design-director

[kanisatha]

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1326718682412720129

An interesting bit of discussion on die rolls, BG3, and PoE.

I am 100% in agreement with Sawyer. His point is exactly why I have, in recent years, soured on D&D mechanics and don't care for D&D that much anymore. I am so glad he opted against using the D&D SRD for PoE, especially because the resulting original PoE mechanics are far superior to D&D mechanics imo.

Edited November 13, 2020 by kanisatha

[thelee]

5 hours ago, kanisatha said:

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1326718682412720129

An interesting bit of discussion on die rolls, BG3, and PoE.

I am 100% in agreement with Sawyer. His point is exactly why I have, in recent years, soured on D&D mechanics and don't care for D&D that much anymore. I am so glad he opted against using the D&D SRD for PoE, especially because the resulting original PoE mechanics are far superior to D&D mechanics imo.

yeah, this has been an eternal problem with d&d-style games. relatedly, it always feels like levels 5-12ish (almost universally regardless of system) "feels" the best, and it's probably because you hit the point where you aren't so low level that you're just overwhelmed by RNG and d20 [and you're not so high level that balance starts getting thrown out the window].

i haven't paid too much attention to d&d post-4th edition, but it always struck me as nonsensical that all the versions leading up to it, most level 1 characters have just enough health to basically be wiped out by one unlucky combat round. like WTF. especially poor wizards with a d4 hit die, not even a particularly unlucky combat round, just the median expected value from a crossbow bolt (a d8). hope the enemy's d20 rolls go your way!

 

notably, i picked up some pathfinder 2e materials and have generally liked it much more than pathfinder 1e and what i've skimmed of d&d 5e, but i did not know until this twitter thread that take 10 is a separate feat in that system. yikes. 

poe/deadfire still is subject to the rng a bit, but uncontested skill checks is a great design choice, and honestly even if it is mostly psychological dressing for a much more generous check, "grazes" are a real nice way to smooth out some of the RNGness while still having randomness in the first place.

Edited November 13, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

With the popular* German TTRPG "The Dark Eye" you have attributes like Strength etc. and once you do a roll (skill check for example) there are always three attributes involved (sometimes one is double like STR/STR/CON). You then roll three D20 (color coded for each attribute is best so you can roll all at once) and then use your skill points minus difficulty to keep the dice roll <= attribute so the whole roll is a success. I found that to be a rather nice system - albeit a tad complicated at first.

*) Popular in Germany

[Wormerine]

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/635774372050878464/i-spoke-with-a-strange-specimen-the-other-day-his
 

Do you know the scene toward the end of No Country for Old Menwhere Sheriff Bell is about to open a door and he hesitates because he senses Anton Chigurh is on the other side?  That’s the effect that seeing the BG3 sex storyboards had on me.

 

Man, he is my hero.  Dang I found this storyboard creepy. Then again, I also feel for the guys who have to animate gratuitous violence in AAAs.

[draego]

Welp looks like the most unique build was saved for last 

 

also dont forget what we win if this is confirmed 

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by draego

[Boeroer]

Congrats to whomever that was. The chant arrangements are pretty wild...

(like using two phrases of Ancient Memory after another instead of a single one,  starting a chant with Many Lives, alternating with an offensive chant and then ending with Many Lives again - which leads to double Many Lives once the chant repeats)

...so I would want to know why they did that. I sense some cheesy reason.

[Wormerine]

 

[thelee]

Josh Sawyer did an interesting talk on armor systems recently, with particular bits on PoE and Deadfire. nothing terribly new if you've been on reddit or on the forums here for a while, but it's interesting just to see how he thinks

 

[xzar_monty]

On 11/13/2020 at 8:55 AM, thelee said:

and honestly even if it is mostly psychological dressing for a much more generous check, "grazes" are a real nice way to smooth out some of the RNGness while still having randomness in the first place.

Sorry about the necro, but here's my experience of how these things felt when playing the game:

After the first island, neither grazes nor crits ever seemed to matter at all. I didn't read the combat log much, so in fact they may have done, perhaps even a lot, but this was not conveyed to me in-game.

Also, really high penetration didn't seem to matter at all, but low penetration most certainly did, a lot.

This is neither praise nor criticism, just the sense I got when playing.

[thelee]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Sorry about the necro, but here's my experience of how these things felt when playing the game:

After the first island, neither grazes nor crits ever seemed to matter at all. I didn't read the combat log much, so in fact they may have done, perhaps even a lot, but this was not conveyed to me in-game.

Also, really high penetration didn't seem to matter at all, but low penetration most certainly did, a lot.

This is neither praise nor criticism, just the sense I got when playing.

i think this is partly a function of UI and also partly a function that IMO deadfire really should've been an additive system with a very limited set of multiplicative effects, including crits and overpen.

 

UI: crits are very obvious to me b.c. i have the "dynamic camera" enabled to do a dramatic zoom-in/slow-down if i kill an enemy with a crit. It doesn't have to be that showy, but for example that saber does lightning damage/self-heals on crit makes the enemy spark with a glow on a crit, which is also obvious.  Hate to dredge up Pathfinder games here, but they explicitly bold/label damage numbers that are critical hits, so they are obvious. I agree overpenetration is also not obvious, but some UI treatment could highlight it, or even just meatier impact sounds.

Mechanically: crits are generally just not that big of a deal. An extra +25% damage on weapons is not huge. It can be huge on spells, but it gets buried in multi-target effects. Coupled with overpenetration and imp crit and other crit effects it can be huge, but honestly crits would be worth paying attention to more if it was a 1.25x multiplier. Same with overpen.

 

I do think grazes are extremely important mechanically. Going back to the pathfinder/D&D system, save-or-else effects really just do suck and feel awful to use and are extremely hard to reason about due to needing to have a huge amount of metagame knowledge of what enemy saves are like (or having to do a bajillion knowledge checks in tabletop). Grazes basically make every save-or-else have a default effect, unless the enemies heroically save against it, which some spells in PF/D&D system do (and I feel like these spells get valued highly by players as a result), but Deadfire/PoE just bakes in as a default which is nice. You don't have to pay attention to grazes mechanically, they just help make your life quietly less frustrating.

Edited May 24, 2022 by thelee