Tyranny Pre-Release Thread

[AwesomeButton]

Additionally, if you use a skill to intimidate an encounter into fleeing, we grant skill experience to the party equivalent to what you would gain if you fought them.

That's the worst possible decision to go with.

 

[Excidium II]

Why?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Because it doesn't matter how you will resolve the quest, obviously.

In a good RPG quests have requirements so not every character can play through every quest, and quests with different solutions have different rewards. That is called meaningful reactivity.

"Fight solution reward = diplomatic solution rewards" is lazy design.

PoE was the same with quest rewards. Banal, shit, boring. So what new did I learn about the game by doing the quest in a different way? I got the same XP and marginally the same non-XP rewards.

This is just so disappointing.

 

[Infinitron]

Because it doesn't matter how you will resolve the quest, obviously.

In a good RPG quests have requirements so not every character can play through every quest, and quests with different solutions have different rewards. That is called meaningful reactivity.

"Fight solution reward = diplomatic solution rewards" is lazy design.

Nobody cares about the choice and consequence of experience rewards, d00d

P.S. Check out my attributes analysis in the news thread, there's some good news for you there.

 

[Excidium II]

Because it doesn't matter how you will resolve the quest, obviously.

In a good RPG quests have requirements so not every character can play through every quest, and quests with different solutions have different rewards. That is called meaningful reactivity.

"Fight solution reward = diplomatic solution rewards" is lazy design.

You're seeing it the wrong way. You get XP for resolving the encounter, doesn't matter how, but the objective is complete.

What's important is if the consequences of the different approaches are different.

 

[prodigydancer]

Finesse? Finesse, Quickness? Lol

They obviously believe that if they split what is commonly called Dexterity or Agility into two stats people will be less inclined to max them. They also think that by paper-clipping Charisma to Constitution they'll save it from becoming a dump stat.

Which means they still don't understand how min-maxing works. Or even why it works at all.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Nobody cares about the choice and consequence of experience rewards, d00d

You're seeing it the wrong way. You get XP for resolving the encounter, doesn't matter how.

What's important is if the consequences are different.

Bullshit. I guess you are the kind of people who gift sweaters for Christmas.

Finesse? Finesse, Quickness? Lol

They obviously believe that if they split what is commonly called Dexterity or Agility into two stats people will be less inclined to max them. They also think that by paper-clipping Charisma to Constitution they'll save it from becoming a dump stat.

Which means they still don't understand how min-maxing works. Or even why it works.

Yeah, let's mix everything with everything until attribute names mean nothing at all, and esentially we have a classless system, and with no attributes, without investing the time to rewrite the PoE codebase.

 

[Excidium II]

Intense reactivity of XP rewards.

I already dislike the idea of "XP rewards" to begin with.

 

[Infinitron]

Finesse? Finesse, Quickness? Lol

They obviously believe that if they split what is commonly called Dexterity or Agility into two stats people will be less inclined to max them. They also think that by paper-clipping Charisma to Constitution they'll save it from becoming a dump stat.

Which means they still don't understand how min-maxing works. Or even why it works.

Yeah, let's mix everything with everything until attribute names mean nothing at all, and esentially we have a classless system, and with no attributes, without investing the time to rewrite the PoE codebase.

Heh, this is a classless system.

Re: Vitality, repost from the news thread:

They've also made Vitality improve your Will Defense, so there is an equivalent combat effect for the stat's "force of personality" aspect. It's not just "Constitution in combat, Charisma outside of combat".

 

[Lacrymas]

Because it doesn't matter how you will resolve the quest, obviously.

It doesn't matter because all the choices lead to the same outcome (i.e. XP). It's a false sense of choice throughout the whole game. This "do it your way" Burger King-like slogan misses the point so much. A choice is only a choice when there is a consequence, that is what defines a meaningful choice, otherwise it's simply flavor. When all the choices have the same consequences it's linearity of a different sort, a more malicious and lazy one and it echoes Skyrim-like systems of player-centric masturbatory power fantasies.

This also ties in negatively with the "improve with use" system because, if they don't make ALL combat in the game optional, then it's always in your best interest to fight rather than anything else. Why? Because you'll get the same xp, but you'll also train up your combat stats which are always going to be more beneficial due to the (hypothetical) unavoidable fights.

 

[AwesomeButton]

When all the choices have the same consequences it's linearity of a different sort, a more malicious and lazy one and it echoes Skyrim-like systems of player-centric masturbatory power fantasies.

And this actually needs to be explained.

 

[Excidium II]

It's like the only consequence of your choices is XP.

If anything it's rather meaningless, you always end up overleveled in CRPGs.

 

[Lacrymas]

And this actually needs to be explained.

To you or to anyone else? ;d

It's basically about design intent. When the game world exists solely to be your bitch it creates this sense of meaninglessness of the world itself. It only exists because you chose to double click the .exe file. It's not a logically connected whole in which you are a part of and can influence through your choices and actions, it's simply a playground for your amusement. This prevents any kind of serious world-building, narrative exploration and design of systems that give your character weight and eventually becomes a meaningless way to kill one hour. You are not enriched by this in any way. It's not easy to explain because it's, like I said, a whole-consuming design focus and mostly veers towards philosophy, i.e. the question of how one enriches oneself and one's life (hint: through art, philosophy and science) and the role of the external stimuli.

 

[AwesomeButton]

To you or to anyone else? ;d

That's the worst possible decision to go with.

Why?

 

[Lacrymas]

AwesomeButton Ah, right, now I understand :p

 

[Bubbles]

This also ties in negatively with the "improve with use" system because, if they don't make ALL combat in the game optional, then it's always in your best interest to fight rather than anything else. Why? Because you'll get the same xp, but you'll also train up your combat stats which are always going to be more beneficial due to the (hypothetical) unavoidable fights.

It's not hypothetical; they talked about that in the US Gamer podcast:

You can't 100% avoid combat, but you can avoid some smaller combats using skills you developed with your character, and in others you may not be able to avoid the entire combat, but you may be able to weaken the encounter by intimidating one or two people and causing them to run away... so definitely we want conversations and skills to really play into the difficulty level, so somebody who wants to focus more on conversational options and approaches can get an advantage in combat that may make the encounter easier for them.

I think this also implies that bosses can't be defeated with non-combat skills.

By the way, can anyone guess what are those icons at the top?

Inventory - Character - Ability Trees - Journal - Party - Map - Crafting - Options ?

 

[Lacrymas]

Sooooo, yeah, good job there, Obsidian. This contradictory nature took me all of 5 seconds to see and they've based their entire game on it.

Not that it can't be worked around, but it's always going to be a compromise.

 

[Roguey]

Always relevant.

 

[Excidium II]

This also ties in negatively with the "improve with use" system because, if they don't make ALL combat in the game optional, then it's always in your best interest to fight rather than anything else. Why? Because you'll get the same xp, but you'll also train up your combat stats which are always going to be more beneficial due to the (hypothetical) unavoidable fights.

It's not hypothetical; they talked about that in the US Gamer podcast:

You can't 100% avoid combat, but you can avoid some smaller combats using skills you developed with your character, and in others you may not be able to avoid the entire combat, but you may be able to weaken the encounter by intimidating one or two people and causing them to run away... so definitely we want conversations and skills to really play into the difficulty level, so somebody who wants to focus more on conversational options and approaches can get an advantage in combat that may make the encounter easier for them.

I think this also implies that bosses can't be defeated with non-combat skills.

By the way, can anyone guess what are those icons at the top?

Inventory - Character - Ability Trees - Journal - Party - Map - Crafting - Options ?

Last one might be encyclopedia.

 

[Prime Junta]

I still dig the bronze-age setting, the general premise, and the emphasis on C&C, but the system... damn, it sounds so starry-eyed, like a bunch of kids let loose to design their first RPG, proceeding immediately to make the same mistakes everybody else did. Hard to be terribly optimistic about this, although as always it's all in the implementation.

I mean, learn-by-doing, pacifist solutions for everything except the biggest/hardest fights, an attribute system made for minmaxing... ouch.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The fate of the middle-class RPG: to offer us two-years dev cycle games, largely inferior to (10 years dev cycle) indie games, even though made with much bigger budgets than the indies.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Is this game level scaled? If it is then learn by doing system makes no fucking sense whatsoever, just like in TES games. If it isn't then I don't mind it much. In fact, I sure like it way better than a combat-heavy crpg that doesn't give xp for combat.

Just theorizing of course, since anyone believing this game is going be anything above lower-tier average is extremely naive.

 

[Theldaran]

I still dig the bronze-age setting, the general premise, and the emphasis on C&C, but the system... damn, it sounds so starry-eyed, like a bunch of kids let loose to design their first RPG, proceeding immediately to make the same mistakes everybody else did. Hard to be terribly optimistic about this, although as always it's all in the implementation.

I mean, learn-by-doing, pacifist solutions for everything except the biggest/hardest fights, an attribute system made for minmaxing... ouch.

If I understand right, you can't just go being all-out pacifistic... Probably there will be mandatory combat, and they're gonna beat you into a pulp if you didn't practise combat, as per the learning system.

 

[Infinitron]

Probably there will be mandatory combat, and they're gonna beat you into a pulp if you didn't practise combat, as per the learning system.

Yes, I'm sure an Obsidian game released in 2016 is going to have a dead end for players who didn't build their character correctly.

 

[Prime Junta]

I still dig the bronze-age setting, the general premise, and the emphasis on C&C, but the system... damn, it sounds so starry-eyed, like a bunch of kids let loose to design their first RPG, proceeding immediately to make the same mistakes everybody else did. Hard to be terribly optimistic about this, although as always it's all in the implementation.

I mean, learn-by-doing, pacifist solutions for everything except the biggest/hardest fights, an attribute system made for minmaxing... ouch.

If I understand right, you can't just go being all-out pacifistic... Probably there will be mandatory combat, and they're gonna beat you into a pulp if you didn't practise combat, as per the learning system.

Exactly.