Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Butter]

It's not like you can't go north at the start of New Vegas. You just can't do it without any friction. Bethesda fans don't like friction in their games.

 

[Tyranicon]

World with dangerous areas > world that has flat difficulty with level-scaling.

Pretty elementary stuff in RPG world at this point.

 

[santino27]

All mainstream devs are super out of touch with what current audiences want. That's why you see these abominations in the industry today.

Ah yes, Avowed is totally betting the farm on romances with a fish man and an ugly ferretwoman who tells you how sexy and pansexual she is on first click.






.... oh fuck that's exactly what they're doing isn't it? What the fuck is wrong with this dev generation?

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Avowed doesn't have player romances, because much like everything else, they were deemed too ambitious to do. Which is probably one of the rare times where their 'do less, and then warn everyone to further lower expectations' approach has actually worked on our behalf.

 

[mediocrepoet]

World with dangerous areas > world that has flat difficulty with level-scaling.

Pretty elementary stuff in RPG world at this point.

You know, this should be true and yet...

 

[Drakortha]

As per usual, Josh is right. The "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want" attitude is how you get to a game like Skyrim

But without it, we won't get to see Todd walk out onto a stage and give us his classic "be who you want, do what you want" sales pitch.

 

[Bad Sector]

Bethesda fans don't like friction in their games.

Explains the physics bugs.

World with dangerous areas > world that has flat difficulty with level-scaling.

I think few people liked that approach even here, but personally i liked the way ELEX's world is designed in terms of difficulty: instead of having clearly separated "easy" (or whatever is "easy" in ELEX anyway) and "hard" areas, you get a somewhat random spread of difficulty with stupidly hard monsters placed right next to easy ones - this creates a sense of uncertainty about if what you'll encounter next. It isn't completely random, just not predictable enough (like "easy near starting areas, hard out of the beaten path" and other similar tropes) to keep you on your toes.

 

[PanickedTushkano]

Very in character.

 

[Sweeper]

Very in character.

After decades of trying he finally figured it out, the only way to create a perfectly balanced game is to to do away with the need for balance by making an adventure game instead of an RPG.

 

[luj1]

Sawyer was never obsessed with balance, he was obsessed with accessibility

Probably it stems from some tabletop trauma of his

 

[Infinitron]

 

[ropetight]

Still active on tumblr...
Does he do Yahoo Answers too?

 

[Harthwain]

As per usual, Josh is right. The "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want" attitude is how you get to a game like Skyrim

Technically this is also true for Morrowind. Although in Morrowind it is possible for enemies to be stronger than you so that can keep you in check for a bit. You should also mention Oblivion as it introduced "enemies scale with you" mechanic, which helped the "I should be able to go anywhere I choose and do anything I want". Skyrim, for all its faults, is a bit better in this aspect than Oblivion was.

 

[Gahbreeil]

Can someone call Mr. Sawyer over to this thread? I had some Qs I need As for.

 

[Infinitron]

Which one of you sent this?

 

[Roguey]

I find it difficult to believe that a person could sleepwallk through BG 1 and 2 and find the PoEs on normal difficulty incredibly daunting.

 

[Riddler]

I find it difficult to believe that a person could sleepwallk through BG 1 and 2 and find the PoEs on normal difficulty incredibly daunting.

Perhaps he has immense issues with pathfinding so that engagement in PoE completely filters him?

Otherwise I don't know what to say, both pillars games are incredibly easy on normal and don't even have hard counters which you might not understand. You can hit everything with your one hammer and win.

 

[Bulo]

That's a commenter after my own heart

 

[Gahbreeil]

PoE had to be daunting to the person because he didn't know the TTRPG. I mean, I found myself a tad daunted when I returned to my old save after a year and didn't know which skills do what. In Hack & Slash mode (No pausing, no skills) I managed to almost clear an entire dungeon level in one go but failed.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I find it difficult to believe that a person could sleepwallk through BG 1 and 2 and find the PoEs on normal difficulty incredibly daunting.

I find it difficult to believe that wasn't a series of long shitposts designed to mess with Sawyer's head. Funny, but cruel.

 

[Quillon]

 

[Butter]

Let me guess. The Kickstarter backers forced him to include manual saves in Pillars.

 

[Odoryuk]

Unfathomably based

 

[dutchwench]

Back when Pillars was only known as Project Eternity, the legendary Japanese game designer Itagaki, best known for the brutally difficult Ninja Gaiden games, came to visit Obsidian's office to give their game a try. After spending a few hours playing it, he raged and broke the keyboard, then ran up to Sawyer and started debating how difficult games should really be, only to leave in tears. It was only after the entirety of Obsidian trapped Sawyer in the janitor's closet to add things like manual saves and remove mechanics like the wind influencing your bow's ballistics & the salty air around the sea corroding your sword 0.00003% faster than usual did Pillars of Eternity finally become a game you can beat without being mentally broken.

 

[Roguey]

Let me guess. The Kickstarter backers forced him to include manual saves in Pillars.

It was brought up, and his preference is for save points and shutdown saves, but being able to save anywhere has been an expected feature by most PC gamers since the 90s.

I think in an RPG there's a lot of monotonous crap you potentially have to redo if you're forced to rely on autosaving/savepoints.

 

[Haba]

I think in an RPG there's a lot of monotonous crap you potentially have to redo if you're forced to rely on autosaving/savepoints.

I dunno, how about making games that don't have a lot of monotonous crap? Just a thought?