Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Efe]

your beloved perk based system is... fallout 4? cos thats what ur describing

 

[Lacrymas]

Fallout 4 also has "stats". And it's a shooter.

 

[Quillon]

your beloved perk based system is... fallout 4? cos thats what ur describing

Nope, its Skyrim :D

 

[Trashos]

you always, always have a trade-off when choosing which feats to get each level, so you don't lose that dimension.

You don't lose it completely, but it is very different delaying getting a feat for another level vs not being able to get it at all (because you do not meet the requirement).

Sure, I am making it clear that I am talking about games that are meant to be replayed and mastered. I do not understand other games. In games that are meant to be replayed, mastered, and metagamed, the 1st palythrough is not a problem because you are supposed to be playing on a lower difficulty. Optimization does not matter there.

 

[DalekFlay]

Comparing Underrail to Pillars misses the entire point that he lost the casuals, not you fucks.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I don't like systems that allow for infinite repsec or are gear based because they make me feel detached from the character. Make me feel like I'm not playing a thief or a wizard but a generic blob that can morph into anything. It's not wrong to let player make hard choices that might suck in the long run, but rather to have him make a decision after he's already familiar with the game. Gothic 2 is pretty much perfect IMO, you get a bare character that can do pretty much anything at the lowest level, but later in the game you actually have to commit to playing a certain type of character.

 

[Quillon]

Damn I try to think of a system without initial attribs, it all comes back to Skyrim. Did they make a brilliant core leveling system?

 

[Lacrymas]

Skyrim isn't an RPG.

 

[Quillon]

Skyrim isn't an RPG.

Whatever you delusionally think it is, the system is RPG system. Come up with a leveling system without initial attribs that's not like/better than Skyrim's. Maybe skills could be point-buy with XP reintroduced and that's just a revision

 

[Butter]

Any stats/skills system that doesn't include a pre-game commitment of some sort is pure trash. You're not playing an RPG at that point.

 

[Beastro]

Hummm, after all this work and 1000 shadows/fampyrs killed, you get to finally meet Maerwald, he is a crazy dude that talk a bunch of irrelevant shit

It would be one thing for that to be the one underwhelming twist and you realize your guy is doomed to have their mind degenerate, but the game is built around smacking your face with that at every turn.

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.

What are you saying? He lost touch with D&D and tabletop games because his testosterone dropped?

If so, that's the nerdiest thing I've seen on this forum in a long while.

IMO it's more likely he outgrew a hobby in his youth, only he focused too much on building his career around that hobby and is now lost.

It was less of a pirate setting and more of a colonial setting featuring pirates (namely the Principi) and - depending on your view - mediocre to shit ship mechanics, particularly in terms of naval combat.

It's hard to imagine what they were thinking considering a 3D naval combat template for Unity costs $75.
FFS I'd probably have more fun if they implemented naval combat in the form of a Battleship game

All they needed to do was replicate Genesis version of Countdown to Doomsday's ship combat, especially how quick and smooth it was.

Only change I'd make to that would be leaving it at just one battle to secure an enemy ship because wandering through after boarding could become too tedious.

The funny thing is how close it seems they were to it, yet how far off it was.

 

[Desiderius]

To be honest, part of the problem is a long ridiculous tradition in Western RPGs of having preset characters that suck. Maybe that tradition has come to an end, but I got wise to absurd premade parties that had fighters with 15 strength or whatever, and having thus been trained, now don't trust any preset or autoleveling.

Yeah, had to fight against that preconception pretty hard in P:K, where beginning stats end up not mattering much and there are a lot of benefits to just sticking with the companions but people were getting off on complaining about how much the companions suck thinking they'd be getting a bunch of brofists.

 

[Desiderius]

What are you saying? He lost touch with D&D and tabletop games because his testosterone dropped?

Indirectly. He lost the courage to stand up against all the other demands and stick to what made him love gaming in the first place. That is in fact a function of T-level. Dudes with lower T-level can still be assholes (as Josh now is), but they lose the countervailing capacity to courageously reach for greatness (and inspire others to join them) that makes people put up with, or even appreciate, the assholishness in the first place.

He makes a lot of excuses about the shortcomings of traditional cRPGs but (my take is that) they're ultimately rationalizations for losing his nerve.

As for nerdy. Duh. If you don't think everyone here is I don't know what to tell you. Most of us have learned to code switch out of it as necessary, but that doesn't change who we are.

I'm cool with it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Damn I try to think of a system without initial attribs, it all comes back to Skyrim. Did they make a brilliant core leveling system?

Gothic had a system like that but it was actually good. Everything in that game can be described as "TES, but actually good".
There's also Deus Ex, since you don't have to spend the points you get at the start right-away.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

AD&D 2 at the latest. It introduced ”official” ways to minmax. IIRC AD&D 1 still had the trad system but can’t recall for certain.

The AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide had five options for rolling ability scores:

1. 3d6 for each ability in order (but Gygax assumed that a player might repeatedly toss out the results and roll again!)
2. 4d6 6 times, drop the lowest die from each result, arrange the six scores as desired
3. 3d6 12 times, keep the higher 6 scores, arrange the six scores as desired
4. 3d6 6 times for each ability in order, keep the highest score for each ability
5. 3d6 in order for 12 characters, keep whichever set of scores the player prefers

The AD&D 2nd edition Player's Handbook had six options for rolling ability scores (three of which were already present in 1st edition):

1. 3d6 for each ability in order
2. 3d6 twice for each ability in order, keep the higher score for each ability
3. 3d6 6 times, arrange the six scores as desired
4. 3d6 12 times, keep the higher 6 scores, arrange the six scores as desired
5. 4d6 6 times, drop the lowest die from each result, arrange the six scores as desired
6. Roll d6 7 times, add these rolls to a base 8 for each ability score, but each roll must be applied entirely to one ability and no ability can exceed 18

3d6: Mean 10.5, deviation 2.96
4d6 drop lowest die: Mean 12.24, deviation 2.85
3d6 six times take highest score: Mean 14.23, deviation 1.77
3d6 twice take higher score: Mean 12.18, deviation 2.44

 

[Prime Junta]

So AD&D 1 already then.

Really though, options 1 and 5 in AD&D 1 are the only ones in which the D&D ability score system makes some kind of sense. It will force players to play some gimped characters from time to time.

It also very nicely counterbalances the madly overpowered wizards -- you'd either have to get lucky and roll 18 on Intelligence (about 1:200 odds), or have some kind of mad adventure where you sell your soul to an infernal power to get it there (or something like it).

As I've long said, OD&D was an elegant, fun, and challenging system but AD&D turned it into an excuse to roll dice and nerd out on massively abstruse, rococo, often contradictory special-case rules and tables. Gygax should have kept the munchkins out.

 

[Lacrymas]

Not so much keeping them out, but not making a system which is pointless and only adds raw numbers that have a right and wrong answer, or one you automatically fill out either way. People who staunchly defend stats when they are badly implemented don't seem to realize the importance of elegance and lack of bullshit that only serves to waste time. Or they are blinded by nostalgia. The IE games didn't benefit from having stats, it only made the good companions inferior to the evil ones (which is kinda clever and shows one legitimate use of them, but that could be achieved without stats) and it was 18/18/18/m/m/m, or however much we needed for dual-classing, from our perspective. What they could do to make stats relevant in video games again is to give us a selection of 6 (or whatever) characters with different stats before the start of the game and we must choose what to do with those stats. And the race selection after that modifies them as well. We could choose to make the 10 INT one a Wizard, but it won't be mechanically sound.

If someone complains that the stats aren't enough for a specific build you want, then this is the problem right here, isn't it? The current system only forces you to allocate the stats for whatever feats you want, it's not a choice in the context, the real choice are the feats you want to get. Just let us choose the feats without stats. There are a number of other ways to limit the power of feats or have prerequisites.

 

[Desiderius]

Yes, Infinitron, at some point most nerds decide, like Graham, to apply our well-developed analytical skills to the problem of interpersonal relations and develop whatever level of mastery attains our goals.

Here's hoping someday Sawyer finds it within himself to do likewise. M'ladyism doesn't work.

 

[Trashos]

Comparing Underrail to Pillars misses the entire point that he lost the casuals, not you fucks.

I have made it very clear that I do not understand what complex/convoluted systems are doing in games that are meant to be played once.

 

[Lacrymas]

All studies that I've managed to find on this topic either have found no correlation between testosterone levels and creativity (video games are a creative endeavor) or that lower testosterone in men is actually better.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1055/s-0029-1211105
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/per.534

 

[fantadomat]

All studies that I've managed to find on this topic either have found no correlation between testosterone levels and creativity (video games are a creative endeavor) or that lower testosterone in men is actually better.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1055/s-0029-1211105
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/per.534

LoL you are retarded! The amount of T could affect the direction you are channelling your creativity,not the quantity of it lol. Some men find new creative ways to fuck women,other create comics for fat menchildren. Also citing swedish studies on testosterone.....lol!

 

[Lacrymas]

None of these are Swedish.

 

[S.torch]

either have found no correlation between testosterone levels and creativity

He didn't say that the level of testosterone make you more creative, he said that it make you more predisposed to impose your vision on the rest as the leader of the group.

 

[vortex]

So in order to make Pillars great again Sawyer should balance testosterone levels as well ? Is that what you're saying?

Spoiler

What foods reduce testosterone?

• Soy products.
• Dairy products.
• Alcohol.
• Mint.
• Bread, pastries, and desserts.
• Licorice root.
• Certain fats.
  
  

What foods boost testosterone?

• Tuna.
• Low-fat milk.
• Egg yolks.
• Fortified cereals.
• Oysters.
• Shellfish.
• Beef.
• Beans.

 

[Lacrymas]

He didn't say that the level of testosterone make you more creative, he said that it make you more predisposed to impose your vision on the rest as the leader of the group.

But then we can't hate Sawyer's vision because it isn't his. You have to choose which hate is dearest to your heart.