Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

[Infinitron]

holy crap...he wants to have 6 exact party members be a viable choice for party composition.... if not "needing" certain party classes didn't matter, then what's the point of classes?

i'm done with this... so sad i actually spent money on this. well good night everyone. i'll see you guys in 10 years.

To be honest, with so few NPC companions in the game he doesn't really have a choice either way.

Bye alt.

 

[Moribund]

holy crap...he wants to have 6 exact party members be a viable choice for party composition.... if not "needing" certain party classes didn't matter, then what's the point of classes?

i'm done with this... so sad i actually spent money on this. well good night everyone. i'll see you guys in 10 years.

Indeed, though I was always skeptical and the last art stuff was a load of turd, I have no hope at all for this game after hearing him talk and reading his previous design notes.

WL 2 still looks good, though. I have a lot more confidence in Fargo, won't be surprised if he starts several decent series of RPGs in the next decade so not all is lost. And if one game is successful, a dozen copies will get spawned. That's really all it takes for 90s to come back again.

 

[Roguey]

Combat experience as in the actual encounters and the pacing between quests (as in the killing trash mobs part). NOT the area design by itself ( I LIKED the area design).

Area design includes designing combat encounters. Though I imagine quite a few areas had assistance from some of the "additional designers."

Quotes from a semi-relevant thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47033-obsidian-dumbs-downer/page__st__20#entry775466

There were battles in NWN2 that a lot of people found challenging. Take Tholapsyx, for instance. Constant Gaw tuned that battle for a long time. A lot of players and testers had a hard time with that fight. I beat her in two rounds. It's pretty hard to tune high level fights so they are fun for both the hardcore player and nubz.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/47033-obsidian-dumbs-downer/page__st__120#entry776288

Sand, on May 30 2007, 01:47 PM, said:
I thin you seriously underestimate the capabilities of your player base, Mr. Sawyer. Its almost insulting.

The people that post on these boards are not indicative of the average player's experience and abilities.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Tholapsyx

Don't even remember this battle. Who was this woman?

 

[Roguey]

The dragon in the fire giant area in act 3.

 

[Captain Shrek]

The dragon in the fire giant area in act 3.

Oh yes. Spam Missile storm until dead.

Totally banal shit boring encounter.

 

[Roguey]

You're no Josh Sawyer then, he did it in two rounds.

 

[Captain Shrek]

You're no Josh Sawyer then, he did it in two rounds.

yeah. I did it in one. *yawn*

(Yes. Metamagic skills + 3 spell casters + 1 rogue with the scroll NOPE. Just used Khelgar.).

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Since the character classes were major stretch goals, its a pretty sure thing it will be a character class based game. To my mind, DnD 3E+ effectively separates necessary and unnecessary skills by hardcoding your absolutely required skills into your character class and limiting skill/feat options by class.

Even if it were more strongly skill based than vanilla DnD, I'm not sure why making sure each skill is useful inevitably means making character creation and development any more idiot proof than DnD. Useful does not equal sufficiency. There's no reason why you can't remove useless skills while still allowing the possibility for idiotic character building to fail. For example, require high-difficulty skill checks, so that the jack of all trades, master of none approach will fail in higher difficulty encounters (such as having mediocre skill in melee and ranged weapons be insufficient to fight effectively with either). Or you could just make some skills interact poorly with the playstyle of some classes, such as stealth skills - great for a rogue, but a poor choice for a front-line fighter in full plate.

 

[tuluse]

Isn't it obvious? The game is an Infinity Engine successor. For the Fallout model see Wasteland 2. Now that's a skill-based game.

Also, they haven't talked about skills that much. It's just that people keep bringing skills up because Codexers are obsessed with the Fallout model and can't imagine anything else.

Once you've tasted filet mignon, why go back to McDonald's?

holy crap...he wants to have 6 exact party members be a viable choice for party composition.... if not "needing" certain party classes didn't matter, then what's the point of classes?

i'm done with this... so sad i actually spent money on this. well good night everyone. i'll see you guys in 10 years.

The game is supposed to be beatable solo. So if 1 rogue can make it through, surely 6 can.

 

[Johannes]

holy crap...he wants to have 6 exact party members be a viable choice for party composition.... if not "needing" certain party classes didn't matter, then what's the point of classes?

i'm done with this... so sad i actually spent money on this. well good night everyone. i'll see you guys in 10 years.

The game is supposed to be beatable solo. So if 1 rogue can make it through, surely 6 can.

Have they said it's supposed to be just beatable solo, or meant to be as easy as with a party?

 

[Rake]

They shouldn't take this into account in design.BG2 was beatable solo with almost every class. But the game was designed with a full party in mind and it shows.It was actually designed with a spesific party(1 healer,1 arcane spellcaster,1 fighter per party) That was beatable solo just happened, and only for players who undertood it's mechanics.The same should happen in P:E. If its designed to be beatable solo ,with a party it will be easy no matter what mode you play.

 

[Captain Shrek]

^

The game is supposed to be beatable solo. So if 1 rogue can make it through, surely 6 can.

wut?

 

[tuluse]

Nothing has been confirmed, I'm not sure they know themselves how hard it will be yet, but I think Tim Cain said something about it being much harder with just 1 character.

They have talked about how the beginning of the game is going to be balanced for fewer than 6 characters, and they plan to limit party size.

 

[OSK]

Sawyer is a bro.

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Poor Sawyer. Today just doesn't seem to be his day. Racking up the criticism on the Codex, Formspring and now on SA.

 

[Moribund]

Then why do things no one wants that are obviously going to fail?

Since the character classes were major stretch goals, its a pretty sure thing it will be a character class based game.

Meaning they weren't necessarily going to have classes at all. Just having classes doesn't mean much anyway, even ME and CoD have classes.

If you think it will be anything like DnD you are in for a surprise. It's not going to play like BG at all, that's clear already, not that gameplay was that great for BG. BG with Obsidian doing the encounter design and a game system from a designer who hates experience points and levels, gonna be an instant classic.

 

[Krash]

I see. Moribund, could you lend me the preview copy you're playing?

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Meaning they weren't necessarily going to have classes at all. Just having classes doesn't mean much anyway, even ME and CoD have classes.

Well, I wasn't very clear - the base classes were in it from the beginning, but what I was getting at was that the multiple stretch goals relating to additional classes indicated that they planned on putting a good deal of effort into implementing classes. No reason to do that unless they were going to be fairly important to character development. I don't think that having classes means a game can't be shit, just that having classes has a strong effect on how skills and character development are implemented because it essentially gives you a core bundle of abilities related to your role. If you develop those core abilities, you will at least be competent at what your class is supposed to do.

If you think it will be anything like DnD you are in for a surprise. It's not going to play like BG at all, that's clear already, not that gameplay was that great for BG. BG with Obsidian doing the encounter design and a game system from a designer who hates experience points and levels, gonna be an instant classic.

Will it be a reskinned DnD? No, definitely not. Will it follow the general DnD paradigm, in which different classes have their own mixture of abilities, strengths and weaknesses (and which has been done over 9000 times outside of DnD rules)? Yes, I'm pretty sure it will.

Honestly, making every skill or ability in an rpg potentially useful is not a new idea or some kind of horrific deviation from traditional game design. The majority of games that have red herring skills don't do it b/c of some principled adherence to punishing players for not reading walkthroughs, they do it because they bit off more than they could chew by implementing more skill mechanics than they could build content for. Running behind schedule? Just cut out all the ancient poetry checks you had planned!

 

[Moribund]

Well, I hope you are right, Harg. I don't think it is easy to make something with the intricacies of DnD, though, and he proved he doesn't even grasp the intricacies of DnD itself with his terrible comments about thieves.

It won't only be totally unlike DnD I think it's very likely going to be worse than DA.

Honestly, making every skill or ability in an rpg potentially useful is not a new idea or some kind of horrific deviation from traditional game design.

I have no problem with this in theory. It's only when you look at the details of what he says here and elsewhere and put it together that it becomes a stinky ball of game ruining poo poo.

When you add it all up there's no other conclusion to be had. Some people haven't paid much attention, certainly if they thing it will be a game system close to DnD they haven't. It's going to be a crazy hodgepodge of bad ideas.

I see. Moribund, could you lend me the preview copy you're playing?

There's an amazing thing you can use to simulate reality and predict the future which never seems to fail. Called a human brain. Hasn't failed me yet.

 

[Shadenuat]

I just can't share his opinion on party composition. Making every party composition viable by letting mages wear heavy armor, heal and DPS defeats the whole purpose of these games to me. Also versatility strips classes of their roleplaying image.

 

[Mangoose]

There's an amazing thing you can use to simulate reality and predict the future which never seems to fail. Called a human brain. Hasn't failed me yet.

Yeah because human brains are never wrong.

 

[Moribund]

There's an amazing thing you can use to simulate reality and predict the future which never seems to fail. Called a human brain. Hasn't failed me yet.

Yeah because human brains are never wrong.

Once you have the information it shouldn't be that often. Thorvalla showed me most people just can't extrapolate like that, though. Eye opening but sad.

 

[Mangoose]

There's an amazing thing you can use to simulate reality and predict the future which never seems to fail. Called a human brain. Hasn't failed me yet.

Yeah because human brains are never wrong.

Once you have the information it shouldn't be that often. Thorvalla showed me most people just can't extrapolate like that, though. Eye opening but sad.

Okay, skyway.

 

[Johannes]

I just can't share his opinion on party composition. Making every party composition viable by letting mages wear heavy armor, heal and DPS defeats the whole purpose of these games to me. Also versatility strips classes of their roleplaying image.

I don't mind if each class can do a lot of various things, as long as they benefit from actually specializing into something.

And DPS is a verb now?