Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

[Broseph]

Roguey, your inspired defense of Sawyer never ceases to please me.

New Vegas was a fairly balanced game, by modern standards, or at least the DLC was. Even at higher levels, there were still some enemies who would give me trouble (fucking deathclaws). Of course, the DLC also raised the level cap to please the popamole crowd, but meh. About as balanced as you can expect from a AAA RPG in this day and age.

 

[Moribund]

Sawyer didn't have any time/freedom to influence NWN2's combat, try to keep up man.

For which we can be thankful it would seem.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah I forgot to mention that New Vegas was specifically tuned for Fallout 3 players. JSawyer was tuned for himself and though food and water are still abundant, the meters were all significantly increased to compensate for that.

Semi-relevant info for the thread (MotB balancing discussion): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47858-mask-of-the-betrayer/page__st__140#entry801455

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.

QQ

In MotB I find myself having to play combat much like Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal, and Icewind Dale II. I'm not saying that the combat is exactly like the Infinity Engine games but with addition of epic levels, the modified resting and gameplay rules makes the combat portion of MotB much more engaging and interesting than the OC. These additions, including some of the other UI and camera changes, makes MotB play much like the legendary Bioware/BIS games. For the majority of the fights I have to think about what I'm doing or else a party wipe is imminent.

I told Josh the game was too hard. He didn't listen - which is probably a good thing for you guys, because I haven't graduated from out of the Nubtorian Guard of Noobsville yet.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47858-mask-of-the-betrayer/page__st__160#entry801497

He should have listened. The number one reason for me not playing (and not buying) certain games is because I find them too difficult at key points and would rather just pass on the frustration.

We did listen to Adam.

In this thread (or perhaps another), I threw Adam under the wheels of the difficulty cart because he built a water genasi 10 fighter / 7 cleric as his starting character. Genasi are not a powerhouse race, but more importantly, being able to cast only 4th level cleric spells in an 18th level dungeon is practically like being able to cast no cleric spells at all. Low on feats, high on nothing, the character is just flat out bad.

Adam's a smart guy, and he is lightly familiar with D&D. So how should we tune an expansion that's oriented around 20th+ level characters? When I played through the expansion the first time, long stretches were so trivially easy that I became bored. I enjoyed the story and the areas a lot, but the overall low level of difficulty probably would have made me stop playing the game if it hadn't been an Obsidian product.

Kevin and Avellone and Ferg were quick to prevent me from requesting IWD2-levels of difficulty because they have more sympathy for nubs than I do. And I should make it clear that I didn't tune the combat personally. I made suggestions that were considered by individual designers and either accepted, rejected, or modified based on their best judgment and the goals Kevin thought were appropriate. I think the game difficulty, as tuned by the designers, is interesting but not difficult for me. And by Adam's experience, some parts are very difficult for someone with his relatively-low familiarity with D&D. D&D is a complicated ruleset and there's a minimum level of understanding required to do anything with it -- especially at 20th+ level. The only real way to get around that is to selectively shave off so much of the complex D&D rules that you're left with something like BG: Dark Alliance or the old Capcom D&D games. If you try to keep all of the core rules but tune the difficulty so you don't really have to know anything, the D&D veterans simply aren't going to find the gameplay compelling at all.

For the record, I will also say that the Black Hound will not be tuned in this way. While I am changing a bunch of rules for the campaign, combat babies will have to leave their rattles and bonnets at the door.

Five years later and Adam hasn't changed. God damn. He, Avellone, and Urquhart remain on my Obsidian Enemies list. I may put them on probation if they say they won't get in Josh's way.

 

[Broseph]

For the record, I will also say that the Black Hound will not be tuned in this way. While I am changing a bunch of rules for the campaign, combat babies will have to leave their rattles and bonnets at the door.

Sawyer hates babbies. :baby:

I knew he was a bro.

 

[Rake]

Yeah I forgot to mention that New Vegas was specifically tuned for Fallout 3 players. JSawyer was tuned for himself and though food and water are still abundant, the meters were all significantly increased to compensate for that.

Semi-relevant info for the thread (MotB balancing discussion): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47858-mask-of-the-betrayer/page__st__140#entry801455

The expansion does start out pretty mellow in the combat department, but it ramps up quickly after that. We put a good amount of effort into revising the combat scenarios so they felt tactically challenging. We tried to find ways to differentiate enemy types from area to area and within each area. Tactical difficulty is usually more interesting than numeric difficulty, if that makes sense.

I think that weathered veterans will at least find the combat engaging. Total nubs (e.g. Adam Brennecke) will probably be wiped out at a few spots. But hey, you're playing an epic-level D&D game, so suck it up and get promoted out of the Nubtorian Guard. I certainly believe that the majority of players moving from NWN2 to MotB will find the latter more interesting and challenging overall.

QQ

In MotB I find myself having to play combat much like Baldur's Gate 2, Throne of Bhaal, and Icewind Dale II. I'm not saying that the combat is exactly like the Infinity Engine games but with addition of epic levels, the modified resting and gameplay rules makes the combat portion of MotB much more engaging and interesting than the OC. These additions, including some of the other UI and camera changes, makes MotB play much like the legendary Bioware/BIS games. For the majority of the fights I have to think about what I'm doing or else a party wipe is imminent.

I told Josh the game was too hard. He didn't listen - which is probably a good thing for you guys, because I haven't graduated from out of the Nubtorian Guard of Noobsville yet.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47858-mask-of-the-betrayer/page__st__160#entry801497

He should have listened. The number one reason for me not playing (and not buying) certain games is because I find them too difficult at key points and would rather just pass on the frustration.

We did listen to Adam.

In this thread (or perhaps another), I threw Adam under the wheels of the difficulty cart because he built a water genasi 10 fighter / 7 cleric as his starting character. Genasi are not a powerhouse race, but more importantly, being able to cast only 4th level cleric spells in an 18th level dungeon is practically like being able to cast no cleric spells at all. Low on feats, high on nothing, the character is just flat out bad.

Adam's a smart guy, and he is lightly familiar with D&D. So how should we tune an expansion that's oriented around 20th+ level characters? When I played through the expansion the first time, long stretches were so trivially easy that I became bored. I enjoyed the story and the areas a lot, but the overall low level of difficulty probably would have made me stop playing the game if it hadn't been an Obsidian product.

Kevin and Avellone and Ferg were quick to prevent me from requesting IWD2-levels of difficulty because they have more sympathy for nubs than I do. And I should make it clear that I didn't tune the combat personally. I made suggestions that were considered by individual designers and either accepted, rejected, or modified based on their best judgment and the goals Kevin thought were appropriate. I think the game difficulty, as tuned by the designers, is interesting but not difficult for me. And by Adam's experience, some parts are very difficult for someone with his relatively-low familiarity with D&D. D&D is a complicated ruleset and there's a minimum level of understanding required to do anything with it -- especially at 20th+ level. The only real way to get around that is to selectively shave off so much of the complex D&D rules that you're left with something like BG: Dark Alliance or the old Capcom D&D games. If you try to keep all of the core rules but tune the difficulty so you don't really have to know anything, the D&D veterans simply aren't going to find the gameplay compelling at all.

For the record, I will also say that the Black Hound will not be tuned in this way. While I am changing a bunch of rules for the campaign, combat babies will have to leave their rattles and bonnets at the door.

Five years later and Adam hasn't changed. God damn. He, Avellone, and Urquhart remain on my Obsidian Enemies list. I may put them on probation if they say they won't get in Josh's way.

WTF? MOTB was too difficult???Now i understand were he comes from with his comments. I just hope he understands that his target audience in P:E is not the same as that in their other games

 

[Excidium]

I just hope he understands that his target audience in P:E is not the same as that in their other games

LOL

 

[Alex]

In the ideal RPG that you have in your head, sure. In a party-based, combat-focused, IE-esque RPG? Not so much.

Well, feel free to disagree, but I feel this model wouldn't be inappropriate even to a Knights of the Chalice like game. Just to reiterate, I don't want combat removed from its central role in the game. What I want is to see all the other things made to interact more with statistics, class choices and story choices, and made to matter more to combat itself. Take Baldur's Gate 2, for example, it had a whole lot of open ended exploration a lot of conversation, characterization and what not. If sometime even had you choosing a side in conflicts, or giving you tidbits about how you could affect this or that in the gameworld (like getting the location of Firkrag's lair). A bit of the content even was made to reflect your character class, like when you got your keep.

I don't think it would be at all inappropriate for a game like it to try to make these things more RPG like. That is, to make your exploration of new scenarios tied to your skills. To make the order that you approach stuff actually matter. To put difficult decisions of how a scenario can play out in the hands of what skills, classes and even choices you decided earlier on. Likewise,, I feel it would be a very good thing if these had major effects on the combat you experience through the game, which is the main course of it as you pointed out. Depending on how you explore the world, what order you decide to go about, what skills you have, how you interact with npcs, combat will play different. Likewise, depending on how you do in combat, you may have different choices during the other aspects of gameplay, or they may just play different. The slaves you are trying to save from the orcs may be NPCs in a fight, and saving them depends solely on keeping them alive while you deal with the orcs. If you save them all, they will be eternally grateful. Ifhalf of them die, they may consider your party more of a bane than a boon.

And yes, I know expecting all this is unreasonable. I know there is no way PE will be this good of an RPG. But I would really like to see it take some steps in this direction. Of course, imagining all big quests you can find on the map will be tied to the calendar, and evolve organically as time pass, is silly. But if 3 or 4 quests use time in an interesting, thoughtful way, and maybe a couple more using it in a good, if obvious way, I would be very happy indeed.

 

[Lancehead]

WTF? MOTB was too difficult???Now i understand were he comes from with his comments. I just hope he understands that his target audience in P:E is not the same as that in their other games

It would be difficult for someone new to D & D.

 

[Hormalakh]

Thank you Roguey for putting that up. I hope he hasn't changed his viewpoints on this, i.e the terrible trio haven't softened him up. I've resigned to having one difficulty level for us (hard - the one Sawyer will play) and two for the nubs (Easy and Normal). Those posts really did make me feel a lot better about Sawyer. Maybe he'll call the difficulties "Story-mode" and "Tactical-story mode" so as not to upset the kiddies who would be offended by playing "easy."

In any case, I've rewatched the video and have been thinking about Sawyer's case, and while I'm not entirely convinced this is a good thing, I think it might work IF PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED (please don't ruin this for me terrible trio....).

Infinitron As such, I've posted your question and Sawyer's answer on the OEI forums for those guys to have a go at it. Perhaps Sawyer will continue the conversation about it there. Wanted to give you a head's up because I didn't name you as the questioner but thought if you wanted to self-promote, you could do so. Edit: I decided to put your name just cuz it was the bro thing to do.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62999-josh-sawyer-balance-and-utility/

 

[Moribund]

Well, feel free to disagree, but I feel this model wouldn't be inappropriate even to a Knights of the Chalice like game. Just to reiterate, I don't want combat removed from its central role in the game. What I want is to see all the other things made to interact more with statistics, class choices and story choices, and made to matter more to combat itself. Take Baldur's Gate 2, for example, it had a whole lot of open ended exploration a lot of conversation, characterization and what not. If sometime even had you choosing a side in conflicts, or giving you tidbits about how you could affect this or that in the gameworld (like getting the location of Firkrag's lair). A bit of the content even was made to reflect your character class, like when you got your keep.

I don't think it would be at all inappropriate for a game like it to try to make these things more RPG like. That is, to make your exploration of new scenarios tied to your skills. To make the order that you approach stuff actually matter.

Yeah, I agree 100%. These are the things that should, hopefully, happen. Really there was none of that in BG II worth mentioning.

It's when he starts talking about the combat really, that my eye starts to twitch. The exploration stuff is one of the greatest parts of an RPG and I think this sort of reactivity really makes a game come alive. But if you start applying all this to combat, and when you take a lot of the stuff he said in the video and analyze it it looks really bad.

Game devs talk a lot about difficulty but no one wants more raw difficulty they want similarly interesting combat where one party might win in a totally different manner than another and have great difficulty with some encounters other parties would breeze through but have some other things to make up for it and that's where it seems like the baby is going to be thrown out with the bath water.

People don't want simple, they want intricacy that sucks them in. Complaining about complain babies. Well, fuck that loser. Seriously.

 

[Johannes]

I don't think having your approach defined by skills is really the best way a lot of the time. Especially if it's skills picked independently of combat stuff. It basically amounts to you choosing your approach on the chargen and level ups, instead of deciding what to do as new situations come along. If you're good at X skill, obviously you'll use it every time over Y, no choice to be had.
It's more interesting to base decisions on what happens in the gameworld, on your own actions - f you're a known slaver you're treated differently than if not, for example. Or you might learn lockpicking from a dude in the gameworld, which opens up some possibilities, and is much more interesting to actually have to go out and seek that skill instead of checking a box upon levelup. But if you just kill the guy who'd taught you, you get a different kind of advantage from that.
Of course, branching like this is much more complex thing to do than just checking if a certain skill is above a threshold and acknowledge that.

 

[Mangoose]

Game devs talk a lot about difficulty but no one wants more raw difficulty they want similarly interesting combat where one party might win in a totally different manner than another and have great difficulty with some encounters other parties would breeze through but have some other things to make up for it and that's where it seems like the baby is going to be thrown out with the bath water.

8:15 - "And again you can have different party compositions that work better with each other or worse with each other in different situations and that's cool."

Watch the fucking video and don't be a moron.

 

[Infinitron]

Moribund is an artful shitposter. Notice how he replies to Alex's post in a way that makes him seem more "moderate" at first glance, but then when you actually read his post you realize it doesn't make any sense at all and is completely unrelated to what Alex wrote. "Applying all this to combat"? Whut?

 

[Lancehead]

Captain Shrek It would be difficult to a D&D newcomer not because encounters were any difficult, but because the game asks the player to make a 18 level character right at the start. The player can pick a pre-built character but that wouldn't teach much about the ruleset or mechanics. One can create the character from scratch, but making 18 levels without any experience of how they work in-game, it can easily become overwhelming. Therefore a chance of messing up the character and finding the game more difficult than it really is.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

In this thread (or perhaps another), I threw Adam under the wheels of the difficulty cart because he built a water genasi 10 fighter / 7 cleric as his starting character. Genasi are not a powerhouse race, but more importantly, being able to cast only 4th level cleric spells in an 18th level dungeon is practically like being able to cast no cleric spells at all. Low on feats, high on nothing, the character is just flat out bad.

Adam's a smart guy, and he is lightly familiar with D&D. So how should we tune an expansion that's oriented around 20th+ level characters? When I played through the expansion the first time, long stretches were so trivially easy that I became bored. I enjoyed the story and the areas a lot, but the overall low level of difficulty probably would have made me stop playing the game if it hadn't been an Obsidian product.

Kevin and Avellone and Ferg were quick to prevent me from requesting IWD2-levels of difficulty because they have more sympathy for nubs than I do. And I should make it clear that I didn't tune the combat personally. I made suggestions that were considered by individual designers and either accepted, rejected, or modified based on their best judgment and the goals Kevin thought were appropriate. I think the game difficulty, as tuned by the designers, is interesting but not difficult for me. And by Adam's experience, some parts are very difficult for someone with his relatively-low familiarity with D&D. D&D is a complicated ruleset and there's a minimum level of understanding required to do anything with it -- especially at 20th+ level. The only real way to get around that is to selectively shave off so much of the complex D&D rules that you're left with something like BG: Dark Alliance or the old Capcom D&D games. If you try to keep all of the core rules but tune the difficulty so you don't really have to know anything, the D&D veterans simply aren't going to find the gameplay compelling at all.

For the record, I will also say that the Black Hound will not be tuned in this way. While I am changing a bunch of rules for the campaign, combat babies will have to leave their rattles and bonnets at the door.

Jesus fucking Christ.
IF you understand the concepts of AC and saving throws (it's not rocket science, right?) and IF you apply that knowledge to your equipment and spell book choices THEN MotB must be one of the easiest DnD games of all time. Super-humanly powerful party members like Kaelyn who can solo the campaign without breaking a sweat come on top of that.
Lol, and now they're balancing the game around "the average player"? Bodes well.

 

[Infinitron]

Hormalakh I also replied to your thread.

The fact is, the more constrained a system is, the easier it is to provide balanced challenges for that system. Because the designer has a better idea of what sort of characters the player will have at any point.

The reason I'm optimistic is because even D&D 3E already had a very large amount of freedom, what with its multiclassing and the ability to take the default feats of other classes, and yet IWD2 was still fairly challenging.

But like I said, other people are going to take some convincing.

 

[Moribund]

Hormalakh I also replied to your thread.

The fact is, the more constrained a system is, the easier it is to provide balanced challenges for that system. Because the designer has a better idea of what sort of characters the player will have at any point.

The reason I'm optimistic is because even D&D 3E already had a very large amount of freedom, what with its multiclassing and the ability to take the default feats of other classes, and yet IWD2 was still fairly challenging.

But like I said, other people are going to take some convincing.

Well duh. The simpler your game the easier to balance? Does that need to be said? But balance is really unimportant, and the only balancing that feels natural is doing everything by hand. Only game devs really talk about balance in a single player game, and generally as a copout for whatever new round of retarded nonsense they are up to. Which is mainly to make things as dumb as possible to make it easier to produce and make it so anyone on earth can make it through to the next cut scene.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Captain Shrek It would be difficult to a D&D newcomer not because encounters were any difficult, but because the game asks the player to make a 18 level character right at the start. The player can pick a pre-built character but that wouldn't teach much about the ruleset or mechanics. One can create the character from scratch, but making 18 levels without any experience of how they work in-game, it can easily become overwhelming. Therefore a chance of messing up the character and finding the game more difficult than it really is.

I strongly disagree here. The argument is now no longer about the original topic. Of course a newcomer without ANY experience with DnD would find MoTB tough because of the level start. But the intrinsic difficulty of MoTB were it scaled down to low levels would still be EASY at best.

 

[Moribund]

Moribund is an artful shitposter. Notice how he replies to Alex's post in a way that makes him seem more "moderate" at first glance, but then when you actually read his post you realize it doesn't make any sense at all and is completely unrelated to what Alex wrote. "Applying all this to combat"? Whut?

You're going to have to ban yourself for trolling if you keep this up.

What he said is he wants the world to react to the skills he has and for it to shape his game experience for quests.

Well, that's exactly what people want for their combat and their party building as well. Differentiation, without it games are crap. NWN II was crap due to undifferentiated encounters. Everything is exactly the same because it's all designed in the most braindead manner. You'd just get swarmed with 500 of the same enemy or fight one big enemy that easily falls to your mages. Over and over.

Instead if I get a thief I want to be able to set up an awesome backstab, I want to be able to have a fighter thief MU that can do even more awesome stuff, or a thief cleric that does other crazy stuff. Instead we got an idiot designing the game who doesn't even know that thief and cleric are most OP classes in DnD as of 3rd edition, or what they are for, let alone how they all work together. And that's why all the NWN encounters were stupid boring crap, it's a guy who didn't ever figure out basics of DnD who's trying to "balance" away any challenge, when ideally you'd have some parties have very difficult time with encounters other parties breeze through, and people who try dumb strategies like an all mage party should get immediately shredded (as they would in PnP). There's some of that in BG series and more of it in toee. NWN II completely failed obviously, and not it doesn't take years of work to make some encounters that are something besides 50 fighters, then later 50 thieves, all in a warehouse inside a major city that's a completely implausible place to fight and rest a hundred times.

What the hell kind of dungeon is that? None of it made any sense. Go kill rats in rat cave is 100 times better than that.

Not to mention you somehow join up with the police force. What is this a bad fox show on late night. Medieval dragon cop, MD?

See what I mean? Well, obviously not or you'd not continue to say such crazy things.

 

[Johannes]

Hormalakh I also replied to your thread.

The fact is, the more constrained a system is, the easier it is to provide balanced challenges for that system. Because the designer has a better idea of what sort of characters the player will have at any point.

The reason I'm optimistic is because even D&D 3E already had a very large amount of freedom, what with its multiclassing and the ability to take the default feats of other classes, and yet IWD2 was still fairly challenging.

But like I said, other people are going to take some convincing.

If you know how to build an optimal PC (reaching ridiculous defense so that enemies can't really harm you), IWD2 shouldn't be much of a challenge. Haven't really played the game so I might be wrong.

 

[Lancehead]

Captain Shrek It would be difficult to a D&D newcomer not because encounters were any difficult, but because the game asks the player to make a 18 level character right at the start. The player can pick a pre-built character but that wouldn't teach much about the ruleset or mechanics. One can create the character from scratch, but making 18 levels without any experience of how they work in-game, it can easily become overwhelming. Therefore a chance of messing up the character and finding the game more difficult than it really is.

I strongly disagree here. The argument is now no longer about the original topic. Of course a newcomer without ANY experience with DnD would find MoTB tough because of the level start. But the intrinsic difficulty of MoTB were it scaled down to low levels would still be EASY at best.

The original point from Sawyer was that Adam made a "flat out bad" character.

 

[Moribund]

Well it's a fair point to say you ought to be able to complete the game with mediocre characters at least, if not flat out bad ones. But the thing is for me and a lot of people restarting to get a better character is part of the fun. You should be able to figure out after not long an all bard party is tough to deal with and go back and restart.

Problem is it's more episodic content BS. Who wants to sit through the same cutscenes over and over? Which comes back again to sawyer being yet another dev who wants to make noninteractive movies, not games.

 

[Captain Shrek]

The original point from Sawyer was that Adam made a "flat out bad" character.

Correct.

Except that the context is Wrong (not yours, his). Expansions are MEANT for players who have some experience with the original when the original DEPENDS on building complex characters.

Adam should have played NWN2/NWN before attempting this. He is essentially a BELOW AVERAGE player.

 

[Roguey]

Adam did play NWN2 before MotB. He also played BG2, TOB, and IWD2 since he cites those games in the very post I quoted. Guy's just a black hole of scrubbery.

WTF? MOTB was too difficult???Now i understand were he comes from with his comments. I just hope he understands that his target audience in P:E is not the same as that in their other games

Lol, and now they're balancing the game around "the average player"? Bodes well.

They're balancing it for people who enjoyed the combat of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. That's the audience to whom they pitched this idea. "Our KS pitch is driven heavily on platform-specific (PC) nostalgia," "We want to take the best elements from each game to make something new. From BG, the exploration and companion interaction, from IWD, the environments and tactical combat, and from PS:T, the highly-reactive narrative and exploration of mature themes." "The feeling of challenge is a balance between enjoyment and frustration. It is not the same for every player, but it is almost always at some midpoint between those two emotions. My goal is to use a variety of mechanics to find balance points that appeal to this specific audience, varied as it is. I think that instant health regeneration errs too much on the side of ease for this audience" and so on.

They should call the easy setting "Brennecke mode."

 

[Infinitron]

They should call the easy setting "Brennecke mode."