Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

You start as some random dude on a caravan and the first mission is to get some red berries to cure some guy diarrhea,

NOTHING SAYS EPIC LIKE BREWING SOME HIGH FANTASY PEPTO-BISMO TO KICK OFF YOUR GAME, BROTHER.

 

[JDR13]

The things people find amusing around here...

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The things people find amusing around here...

Back in your day...

 

[Roguey]

After all that, maybe those people that didn't finish act 1 were the wise ones.

I can be just as glib about any given RPG.

 

[DeepOcean]

After all that, maybe those people that didn't finish act 1 were the wise ones.

I can be just as glib about any given RPG.

True, unfortunately, PoE is one of the few RPGs I played that didn't bother to give me a reason to not be cynical about it.

 

[Desiderius]

Good to know that Sawyer is back in his twenties. The best years in life.

Yeah, my low-T theory doesn't appear to fit the facts very well.

T gone wrong. That's a 20s thing too.

 

[Junmarko]

He spent 6 years making 2 games he didn't want to in a genre he doesn't enjoy,

Didn't want to & doesn't enjoy?

Josh Sawyer

Works:

• Icewind Dale (2000), designer
• Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001), designer
• Icewind Dale II (2002), lead designer
• Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006), lead designer
• Alpha Protocol (2010), designer
• Fallout: New Vegas (2010), director, lead designer
• Pillars of Eternity (2015), director, lead designer, writer
• Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018), director, narrative designer

 

[Lichtbringer]

Josh doesn't dislike RTwP or isometric games AFAIK, he is just not particularly fond of the Baldur's Gate series or D&D mechanics.

 

[DeepOcean]

Josh doesn't dislike RTwP or isometric games AFAIK, he is just not particularly fond of the Baldur's Gate series or D&D mechanics.

That is the problem, I'm not fond of BG 1 mechanics as well and Sawyer said alot of criticisms that I really agree with but it turned out that I was even less fond of Sawyer's system in the end. He tried fixing alot of stuff that was wrong on the infinite engine games but then he hit a brick wall of unintended consequences for his design decisions, many of those consequences would only be visible when playing the game.

Those unintended consequences started to accumulate, he had to balance alot of unexpected things of his system that weren't working properly AND produce a game at the same time. I like Kingmaker much better not because it is perfect but because it works and Sawyer bite more than he could chew when trying to design a whole system from the ground up without time for extensive player testing and iteration.

 

[MajorMace]

without time for extensive player testing and iteration

May I retort : the testing lasted for two years and the final iteration was dlc part 2

 

[DeepOcean]

without time for extensive player testing and iteration

May I retort : the testing lasted for two years and the final iteration was dlc part 2

By DLC part 2, you mean DeadFire, right?

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Are you kidding me?

Nope.

T-level loss is real and it's spectacular(ly devastating).

Josh went from this:

"I was someone who, I grew up playing D&D, I played a tonne of it at university, too much at university, and I kind of just assumed that everyone understood how to play D&D, and so I designed combat and counters that were just ruthless, and brutal, and psychotic."

To a dude afraid of his own shadow.

The dumbing down defenses are an ex post facto rationalization of his own fecklessness. If he really hated BG like he pretends to now he'd have never signed on for PoE in the first place.

Exit the warrior, today's Josh Sawyer.

What does it tell you that playing proper D&D is now viewed in an alpha light even.....we can't even get kids to play D&D, the rules are too oppressive and manly or something..wtf?..lol lol...

 

[Desiderius]

What does it tell you that playing proper D&D is now viewed in an alpha light even.....we can't even get kids to play D&D, the rules are too oppressive and manly or something..wtf?..lol lol...

The kids are alright, it's Sawyer who's whipped.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

What does it tell you that playing proper D&D is now viewed in an alpha light even.....we can't even get kids to play D&D, the rules are too oppressive and manly or something..wtf?..lol lol...

The kids are alright, it's Sawyer who's whipped.

D&D is very popular now, so I don't understand the constant urge to make it more simple or change the rules all the time to somehow appeal to...who? or what? can't they just be happy with the audience they have? But they consider the d&d audience a sure thing I guess..

 

[Tenebris]

What does it tell you that playing proper D&D is now viewed in an alpha light even.....we can't even get kids to play D&D, the rules are too oppressive and manly or something..wtf?..lol lol...

The kids are alright, it's Sawyer who's whipped.

D&D is very popular now, so I don't understand the constant urge to make it more simple or change the rules all the time to somehow appeal to...who? or what? can't they just be happy with the audience they have? But they consider the d&d audience a sure thing I guess..

They want the legendary mass market.

 

[user]

But they consider the d&d audience a sure thing I guess..

Yes, and then some of them are like "I have absolutely no idea what went wrong, let's blame the fans". Eliminating complexity is like a doctrine amongst most developers. Shame that most of those can't also see the difference between unnecessary complexity and complexity that brings something to the table.

 

[Roguey]

I wouldn't use Pillars of Eternity as an example of "eliminating complexity." If anything, he made it more/too complex.

 

[S.torch]

he made it more/too complex.

It wasn't too complex. Kingmaker had a lot of rules and is doing fine.

 

[Roguey]

It wasn't too complex. Kingmaker had a lot of rules and is doing fine.

Patfhinder's rules are thoroughly documented and can be reverse-engineered and theorycrafted easily enough with pencil and paper and maybe a calculator. This isn't the case with PoE.

 

[LudensCogitet]

But they consider the d&d audience a sure thing I guess..

Yes, and then some of them are like "I have absolutely no idea what went wrong, let's blame the fans". Eliminating complexity is like a doctrine amongst most developers. Shame that most of those can't also see the difference between unnecessary complexity and complexity that brings something to the table.

I think this is related to the notion that games are supposed to be "experiences" rather than challenges or worlds. They're crafted for smooth, inoffensive enjoyment. Challenge becomes a spice used sparingly; just enough to keep the player engaged, but never enough to frustrate them, because the point is for them to "experience" the game, not play it, not commit to engaging with it.

From what I can tell, this experiential notion of game design is simply accepted among developers.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

D&D is very popular now,

The entire US/Canada RPG market made $35m in 2016.
https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-bigs-the-rpg-market.664499/
Pillars of Eternity by itself most likely made more than that. This site dramatically overestimates the amount of people playing pnp games.

 

[Junmarko]

Someone on the Obsidian forums made this during the Project Eternity days. I saved it because it was appropriate.

Was that someone the girl you used to be?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Someone on the Obsidian forums made this during the Project Eternity days. I saved it because it was appropriate.

Was that someone the girl you used to be?

This would be Roguey

Spoiler

Such a good show.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

It wasn't too complex. Kingmaker had a lot of rules and is doing fine.

Patfhinder's rules are thoroughly documented and can be reverse-engineered and theorycrafted easily enough with pencil and paper and maybe a calculator. This isn't the case with PoE.

Maybe more important, time is standardized in Kingmaker so you don’t need to keep track of six separate countdowns at once (plus however many disparate buff and debuff timers you’ve got going). Everything is per round or per minute; it’s much easier to make snap judgments that way. Same with the infinity engine games. The six second rounds give them a steady rhythm, like a good drummer.

Real-time with pause feels much smoother when there’s a certain amount of synchronization, something that’s entirely absent from POE or Deadfire or Tyranny. They’ve got nothing keeping the beat.

 

[Junmarko]

Such a good show.

Absolutely. Even looking back again now, funny how many adult themes they threw in it, but as a kid watching it you're oblivious.