Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Cat Headed Eagle]

That was probably something they did on their spare time, so to speak.

I don't believe that for a second. They were paid their salaries just like they always are. They aren't working at some small independent company living on subsistence wages until release and only then paid commensurately with the success of the title.

What I meant is that Josh probably used some dead time to gather some Obsidian employees to work in his game while others were being developed.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Roguey]

Black Hound needing more than 3 years and Aliens not even being close to finished after 2.5 (despite Feargus's claims to the contrary) was certainly bad.

 

[luj1]

Josh lost all credibility as game designer, seems fully devoted to whoring on twitter for some peanuts of attention (from his 7 fans)

 

[TC Jr]

Josh lost all credibility as game designer, seems fully devoted to whoring on twitter for some peanuts of attention (from his 7 fans)

He's a complete fag on twitter but I still like his games, weird one

 

[Infinitron]

 

[ropetight]

This man needs to be forbidden from getting near to RPG's like Mitnick was forbidden to go near a computer.
Nothing good can come out of it.

 

[Alienman]

Why not just keep quick save as it is, and let the player make the decision.

 

[Artyoan]

I don't disagree with what he's saying there. Not a fan of threshold checks though. I've said before that manual saving is the root of the problem. A crpg can have a dark souls style death system to accommodate automatic saving and push back on the player desire to make the perfect playthrough from save scumming.

It would just require not having a buggy game and being very clear about what dialogue/choice actually entails, even if the full consequences are unknown, so as to not frustrate the player too much.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Who the hell reloads a save to pick different choices, is that how your grandpa would play an RPG you fucking zoomers? No he would ride it out his choices while buttfucking grandma in the ass.

 

[Roguey]

Why not just keep quick save as it is, and let the player make the decision.

First post in the thread https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1691924424990273693 "if designers do not like save scumming (not a given), they should design their mechanics to not incentivize save scumming."

 

[Infinitron]

 

[0sacred]

Eliminate all bad choices. Dump your most important ability scores. Equip sticks for weapons. Let your squishies tank.

 

[Alienman]

I would rather the enemies miss me than grazed since getting HP back can be a pain in DnD. Death by thousand grazes.

 

[Orion]

Why not just keep quick save as it is, and let the player make the decision.

Because players make decisions that go against their best interest and need to be protected from themselves

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Josh namedrops Souls but he forgets that those games are infamous for not communicating things to the player. That came as a necessary change in Elden Ring, but even then, the feedback you're given is partial, and players know that, because they know the game itself is unreliable in this regard. You don't care about failing in Souls games because you might not even know you're failing. In traditional D&D games, PoE and New Vegas you're given an entire database of information about the percentages, dice rolls, effects and the like. You know you're going to fail. You know failing a quest is a mini game over. Some game designer infamously said that a game over screen is a failure of game design, and it was criticized because it was said in a context of gameplay being dumbing down, but in a way I feel this applies to the Souls philosophy. The only real game over is when the player dies. Failing a quest or not means that you'll miss out on something or other, yes, but that's only one more tool in a world of other tools you have at your disposal. And this approach also invites experimentation, unlike New Vegas, where you want to get those 100 speech points because fighting Lanius is a PITA in this gamebryo thing.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

Because players make decisions that go against their best interest and need to be protected from themselves

And that's why the government should ban videogames.

 

[Roguey]

And this approach also invites experimentation, unlike New Vegas, where you want to get those 100 speech points because fighting Lanius is a PITA in this gamebryo thing.

On one playthrough I just snuck over and popped him in the head no problem.

 

[GamingConnoisseur]

josh would make a beautiful transwoman. When is he coming out of the closet? it would make all new vegas fans so happy

 

[scytheavatar]

Josh basically advocating the destruction of role playing in CRPG.

 

[Butter]

Deadfire had an interesting approach with skills, where you'd get two points each level, one of which was limited to roleplaying checks in dialogue. So every character would have the opportunity to do a Bluff/Diplomacy/Streetwise or whatever, without having to sacrifice combat effectiveness. I don't see why this approach couldn't be used in other games, and it would seem preferable to destroying attributes.

 

[turkishronin]

Josh basically advocating the destruction of role playing in CRPG.

Sawyer really wants to make Final Fantasy with skillchecks
The real problem with DnD is that it's originally designed with dungeon killing and murderhobo'ing in mind. All the social situations and stuff like that are forcibly shoehorned in.

 

[Artyoan]

Separating attributes from skills checks and crafting/professions is what I would do, mostly.

Also, each level of an attribute would have an associated trait so that selecting attributes isn't just statistical upgrades but a basic defining feature of your character's capabilities. Traits have always been the most interesting part of character creation because they defy easy comparisons and affect gameplay decision making more.

 

[luj1]

Josh basically advocating the destruction of role playing in CRPG.

ofc, we've already seen that with Pillars

he just went insane

 

[ropetight]

Josh basically advocating the destruction of role playing in CRPG.

While you do your due dilligence and separate attributes from skills, be sure to implicitly split almost every class into two of tank/damage-dealer/buff-caster subclasses to completely undo whatever meaning classes have.
Like Josh did.