Development Info Tim Cain at Reboot Develop 2017 - Building a Better RPG: Seven Mistakes to Avoid

[Infinitron]

Sure, you might be right, but the extreme conclusion from what Grauken is saying is that you should never create graphs in Excel, because just reading the numbers off the table is more intuitive. Of course that's not what he really means, so better to just say that this particular visualization doesn't look like it will work.

 

[Rev]

First MCA, now Cain... it appears the only former BIS dev who want to make proper rpgs is Sawyer now.

 

[Grauken]

That's a developmental fallacy. I remember all the 90tie games when they thought doing everything with little intuitive icons would be better than text buttons. Turns out most of those icons where never as intuitive as simple text buttons (e.g. a disk for saving doesn't make sense for kids these days). I wager that the shapes would confuse our gameplaying dumb nut audience far more than plain numbers

That's not what he's doing here.

He's trying to streamline information by repackaging it in a visual style he thinks it's easier to fathom, which I think is a fallacy. It's not

I think it's a fallacy when it's a one-to-one replacement of a text label with a shape. Not when you're creating a fundamanentallly new way of organizing the information for which a geometric shape is the most natural means of visualizing.

Is it dumbed down? Yes, probably. Less intuitive? I don't think so.

Why have stats at all when they're so dumbed down to be almost meaningless. Whether it's number or shapes or whatever, if you keep the same level of complexity it will always confuse dumb nuts, having little triangles won't help you there. If you dumb it down, why not admit you just want to make an action game and completely disregard stats at all. At least that way you're honest about your approach

 

[Thonius]

Et tu,Tim?

 

[Grauken]

Sure, you might be right, but the extreme conclusion from what Grauken is saying is that you should never create graphs in Excel, because just reading the numbers off the table is more intuitive. Of course that's not what he really means, so better to just say that this particular visualization doesn't look like it will work.

That's different. In most cases not using tables instead of diagrams is utterly valid, because executives want it down to simple numbers, nobody reads tables, as most of the information in them is extraneous. But cRPG players use character stats. Hiding them is an affront.

 

[Darkzone]

Question to Tim Cain: How can i permutate your triangles, if i want to have a character with very good perception, very good Intelligence and good Charisma and Ok physical states or a character with very good strength, agillity and endurance and yucky intelligence, charisma and perception.

You can have both visualized attributes and numbers at the same time.

Spoiler

At the beginning i thought about this.

 

[Grauken]

In my experience, most people cannot read spider diagrams at all

 

[Azrael the cat]

Fuck, all the old developers got brain rot

If it can happen to John Carpenter, it can happen to any one.

And like John Carpenter, if you're going to get brain rot, at least have the style to do get it soon after making a story about a a creature that, upon killing you, takes your face, mind and memories and uses them to further its evil ends.

 

[Roguey]

What's the point in increasing critical damage, you have to start pretty low, making crits unexciting, or start high and kill people dead for 3000% damage, what's the point. Even worse actually when crit damage is a flat number as working that number upwards also seems slow and unexciting.

Dungeon Siege 3 had the doom stat which increased critical damage. The range was something like 1.5-3x if you stack it as high as you can. It's fine.

 

[Davaris]

7 ways to try to hide you are making an RPG for people that don't like RPGs.

That's probably it, he doesn't want to admit he's trying to make games for retards

Well there's more of them, and this here documentary says they're increasing every year.

 

[DeepOcean]

To be honest, I think it's good that Tim wants to experiment again. I am just not sure how it will end...

Sure, innovating is something really good unless the definition of innovating is "Damn, how am I going to fool people that hate RPGs into playing one?"

That is a path that leads you into making action games with some very superficial RPG elements on the top because... spoiler alert for developers: People that don't like RPGs will make pressure for your "RPG" game to be less and less of an RPG. It is more honest to say you aren't making RPGs anymore because you wanna go where the money is, Boderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops and multiplayer and the least amount of roleplaying as possible.

Tim just repeated on this talk all the modern design talk points from the AAA industry as if it was an incredible discovery. Alot of those older developers just lost any confidence on design and are now obsessed with following the herd.

 

[Paul_cz]

Well, there it goes then. Fuck you and fuck numberless geometric shapes.

Oh well, still have a big backlog of old RPGs I never played. No loss.

I wish this would be the case since I prefer first and third person over isometric, but I doubt Obsidian has money for this. And watching the presentation I did not really get an impression that those examples given were necessarily from the current project.

Great presentation though, I disagree with some stuff (geometry shapes over numbers? fuck that), but I liked his examples of reactivity from Arcanum, it gave me big boost of enthusiasm in giving it another chance.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

People that don't like RPGs will make pressure for your "RPG" game to be less and less of an RPG.

Prime example: Deus Ex - Invisible War

 

[Infinitron]

Boderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops and multiplayer and the least amount of roleplaying as possible.

What if it's Borderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops (1-2 in his list) AND roleplaying (5-7)?

 

[DeepOcean]

7 ways to try to hide you are making an RPG for people that don't like RPGs.

That's probably it, he doesn't want to admit he's trying to make games for retards

Well there's more of them, and this here documentary says they're increasing every year.

Man, this was the first thing I remembered when Tim goes on labelling his stats with yucky, ok and great.

 

[Haplo]

Boderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops and multiplayer and the least amount of roleplaying as possible.

What if it's Borderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops (1-2 in his list) AND roleplaying (5-7)?

Can't have that. There's waaay too many numbers in Borderlands. It's too complicated.

 

[Alienman]

This is kinda... yucky.

 

[DeepOcean]

Boderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops and multiplayer and the least amount of roleplaying as possible.

What if it's Borderlands 2 with lots of addicting random drops (1-2 in his list) AND roleplaying (5-7)?

On a few years:
"Hi, I'm Tim Cain, the leader designer of Fallout 5: Borderlands Edition, after my long years of experience making Fallout 5 I've have come to the conclusion that people feel confused when they get to a door they can't open, I watched alot of players getting frustrated with missing content. Another thing I did and thought was okay, to have stats determining speech checks was a mistake because people would miss content too. I really hate the possibility of people making wrong builds with all those confusing attributes that people hate so Fallout 6 will only have three stats for people to easily understand:

"I gonna rip your guts." for melee fighters.
"Gonna headshot you NOOB and I hate your mom too." for ranged fighters
"Mr. Smart pants egghead." for intellect based builds."

I think this is an acceptable and cool way to give what people want.

 

[DeepOcean]

If you think I'm being edgy Infinitron, did you ever played Skyrim? Sorry, I don't have this trust on Obsidian as you do.

 

[Infinitron]

If you think I'm being edgy Infinitron, did you ever played Skyrim? Sorry, I don't have this trust on Obsidian as you do.

I don't think Obsidian are interested in compromising on the C&C aspect of their games right now. I don't think Leonard Boyarsky left his job at Blizzard to do that. I think Obsidian see the popularity of FO:NV compared to FO4 these days, and want to cash in on that.

 

[Tigranes]

"People are bad at maths, let's make our maths wrong so they are right"

I'll give the whole geometric stuff the benefit of the doubt, people should be allowed to experiment with crazy shit and that's why it's an experiment. It'll be a different story if we see it in a real game...

 

[Lurker King]

People are bad at maths, let's make our maths wrong so they are right.

Nah. It's more like:

People hate stats, let's drop stats so we can sell more units because I don't give a damn about cRPGs or its misogynistic minuscle gaming community anymore.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Fuck, all the old developers got brain rot

If it can happen to John Carpenter, it can happen to any one.

And like John Carpenter, if you're going to get brain rot, at least have the style to do get it soon after making a story about a a creature that, upon killing you, takes your face, mind and memories and uses them to further its evil ends.

Citation needed? Ok, I twisted it a bit to fit the scenario, but common, The Thing FFS!!!:D

 

[Grauken]

Carpenter's decline is rather impressive, sort of, so many great movies and then it all went to shit

 

[valcik]

In summary, I think it's clear that Tim and Leonard's game will very much be a streamlined, "newschool" sort of RPG.

A lot of things you've listed here appeared in V:TMB.

CtH depending on player's skill rather than stats;
non-linear approach to quests;
reactivity based on character's background, stats, or skills;
antagonist being common guy treated and manipulated by NPCs accordingly..

Less complexity in character sheet is a bad news, I'd take any game similar to V:TMB anytime though. Such a flawed gem!