Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Prime Junta]

Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

Semantics.

It is a degenerate strategy though.

 

[Parabalus]

A question to everybody:
Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

It qualifies as being a colossal retard.

 

[Prime Junta]

------> okay fine, here's a tl;dr refresher

A degenerate strategy is when a player discovers a way to play a game that:

(1) Gives an advantage not intended by the game's designer and
(2) Is rote, repetitive, boring, or otherwise unenjoyable.

Note that both propositions have to be true for a strategy to be considered degenerate, and that there is a subjective element involved, i.e. the edges are fuzzy. Some games are rote and grindy by design, and lots of unintended strategies are fun and creative.

Some moderately uncontroversial examples of degenerate strategies:

(1) Harm-spam in Arcanum. I.e., using real-time combat mode and clicking Harm as fast as you can; your damage output is limited by the speed of your clicking rather than anything else.
(2) Pudding-farming in Nethack. Level up enough that black puddings do not pose a threat, then attack them with a rusty knife to get them to divide, when they're at maximum divisions, kill to harvest XP and loot drops.
(3) Trekking back and forth between a shop and a dungeon in Baldur's Gate when your carrying capacity isn't sufficient to haul back all the shit loot that somebody mysteriously pays for.
(4) Save-scumming in order to rest-spam in Icewind Dale.

Now, a core Josh-ism is that if a game rewards a degenerate strategy, then its designer has fucked up. It's based on an observation he's made about players: they respond to incentives, even really weak ones. He believes that if he puts a button in a game which spits out one gold piece every second if you keep clicking it, a substantial population of gamers would just stop there and keep clicking it until their mouse button dies.

Or, put another way, "games should incentivise fun activities, and not reward boring activities."

That's really all there is to his aversion to degenerate strategies. It's not the players who are at fault for exploiting them; it's the designers who made them worthwhile to start with.

So, let's look at your list AwesomeButton:

1. It's "degenerate gameplay" to have mobs surprise you if you sleep, because players will savescum to avoid the mobs.
2. It's "degenerate gameplay" to have to manage an inventory. It adds nothing to the gameplay. Let's let players have an unlimited inventory.
3. Players end up with a lot of cash towards the endgame because they can collect every piece of trash and sell it for one coin. We'll use the Stronghold as a money sink.
4. Although the inventory is limitless, we are limiting the amount of camping supplies players can carry so we can limit how many times they can rest before backtracking.
5. Backtracking and sleeping at an inn after every combat is also "degenerate gameplay". Yes, I know, we just incited players to play this way. But it's a bad way to play, believe me.
6. Players like to face every encounter 100% prepared and rested. Whoop-de-doo - it's how people play, we can't change that.

That's kind of a weird twisted fun-house mirror view of what Josh actually thinks, based on your misconception of what he means by "degenerate strategy." It's not completely unfounded -- most of those points are based on something Josh has commented on, it's just that you've totally misunderstood him. Let's try to correct the record:

1. Random encounters while camping are pointless in a game with unlimited saves, because players will just avoid them by savescumming (which is a degenerate strategy, i.e., something the game should not incentivise).
2. A limited inventory in a game where enemies drop salable loot is a bad idea, because players will work around it by trekking back and forth between the cleared dungeon and a shopkeeper (which is boring busywork, i.e., something the game should not incentivise).
3. ... this one I can't connect to anything Josh has actually said; IIRC Tim mentioned the stronghold as a money sink at some point, but I don't think Josh has ever been particularly concerned about the broken late-game economy in this sort of game.
4. Camping supplies were put in to discourage rest-spamming (because rest-spamming throws the balance out of whack as the game is balanced around players having to economise per-rest resources). Josh has later admitted that it worked poorly because players just trekked back and forth for more; therefore the changes in P2.
5. Hey, you got one right!
6. The first sentence is correct. The second is not: camping supplies and the P2 rest mechanics are an attempt at precisely getting players to "change that." I.e., push forward rather than resting. Josh clearly likes strategic resource management and would like players to not rest between every fight. Camping supplies and the P2 system are both attempts at doing this. Again, what gets my goat is that he's overcorrected on the other side of the equation as well -- by removing per-rest spells, he's taken the teeth out of strategic resource management, which is a loss.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Why are we even talking about the degenerate strategy? Does anyone actually do that? The problem isn't that some autist rests after every fight, but rather that there's little reason to play well and conserve resources - the difference in terms of time saved between optimal and average play is small enough that it doesn't matter in practice. Hence making the resource management irrelevant, and caring about it like Prime Junta nothing but self-imposed difficulty.

I don't mean this as a slight, for the record, I do play both IE games and PoE this way as well, but the altered rest system in PoE doesn't factor into this preference.

 

[Jimmious]

What? Having all spells available is like.. the whole game? Of course there is reason to play well and reserve resources. Unless you mean that going all the way back to towns and resting is so fast that there is no reason NOT to do it.... and I disagree with that too.

 

[Ulfhednar]

A question to everybody:
Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

Degenerate strategies in the IE games that do not work/are not necessary in PoE:

Minor health potions and Cure light wounds x10 after every fight.
Rest spamming/save scumming through random encounters.
Leveling up characters by killing one type of monster over and over again (**hrmmhrmm** IWD - Cold wights in Dragon's Eye **hrmmhrmm**).
Importing custom characters from a multiplayer save into a single player game. (Debatable given the second part of Junta's definition for degenerate strategy.)
Wand/Merchant exploits.
All manner of strategies that use out-of-combat casting to gain extreme advantages during combat.

Degenerate strategies that work in PoE that also worked in the IE games:

Selling all the Xaurip spears... (Fine with me, I hate inventory tetris.)
Running back to town after every fight to rest at the inn / get camping supplies. (Works great if you are 15 years old, suck at the game, and this is LITERALLY the only thing you have to do all day long.)

I'm sure this list is not exhaustive, but they really put some effort into minimizing degenerate strategies in PoE that the game could have easily inherited from its IE predecessors. PoE 2 is opening up the floodgates on multiclassing options, so there is going to be very little reason for things like shadow keeper / EE keeper to construct and play with illegal character builds. They are also adding in Berath's Blessings - we still don't know what that system will be like, but if it allows you to use items from past playthroughs that will be interesting for discussions on degenerate strategy.

To me, this is the most important criteria: (2) Is rote, repetitive, boring, or otherwise unenjoyable. PoE stream-lined a lot of the tedious nonsense from the IE games. Can you trek across three or more loading screens to rest at the inn after every fight and then come back? Yes. Is there any reason to do so? In 99% of cases, fuck no. And as degenerate strategies go, it's a pretty inefficient one by comparison.

 

[Prime Junta]

All manner of strategies that use out-of-combat casting to gain extreme advantages during combat.

I believe most of these fall under "unanticipated, but fun." Like the hijinks you can do with Wizard Eye for example. The boring rote casting -- pre-buffing -- is working as intended, in fact IWD encounters at least are balanced based on the assumption that players pre-buff.

Other than that, good list. :brofist:

 

[Ulfhednar]

I believe most of these fall under "unanticipated, but fun." Like the hijinks you can do with Wizard Eye for example. The boring rote casting -- pre-buffing -- is working as intended, in fact IWD encounters at least are balanced based on the assumption that players pre-buff.

Yeah - to be clear, I was not talking about pre-buffing.

I think the hijinks and other craziness like mislead/project image were fun, but it seems clear from PoE's design of combat casting that they were trying to prevent those kinds of strategies as well as pre-buffing - i.e. that they consider them degenerate strategies. I think I probably disagree with their design philosophy here - I would have been happy to see pre-buffing go while leaving some of the more flavor type spells that are potentially exploitable - but it's clear that they thought about these things and made an intentional decision about how they wanted to address it.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[The Bishop]

Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

Trying to answer this question on Codex is going to devolve into establishing one true definition of "exploiting", don't think I care enough to go into it. However, what's interesting here is the very thing with players having to wonder whether using some of game's basic mechanics constitutes exploiting. It's like playing Super Mario and being concerned that maybe jumping too much is breaking the game. If your players have to consider these types of questions, as a game designer you fucking failed.

The problem with dysfunctional mechanics that rely on annoyance or player imagination is not those edge cases when somebody outright cheesing every smallest advantage out of them. Just like, say, armor skills in Elder Scrolls games aren't bad because you can pump them up by purposefully sitting in one place while being attacked by a rat. The problem is when you realize that in order to progress this skill at all you need to get hit, and if you play well enough you will be hit very rarely, resulting in no progress. And then you have to debate with yourself whether playing in a way that gets you damaged more, but not quite as much as just standing in front of a rat, constitutes exploiting, and how much exactly "not quite as much" is. You have to consider this, because game designer didn't and instead went ahead with a system that doesn't work, or to put it bluntly, didn't do his job.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

Semantics.

It is a degenerate strategy though.

Good. Actually, "exploiting game mechanics/abusing game mechanics in a way not envisioned by the designer" was my definition of a degenerate strategy, so it's not a semantics issue at all. I don't want to argue over definitions here though, as The Bishop points out.

The point of the "twisted fun-house" exaggerated presentation of Josh's inconsistent argumentation of why a mechanic is present or absent was to demonstrate how, in order to discourage one type of degenerate gameplay - save-scumming before resting, he incentivises another - backtracking is easier. However Josh's treatment of savescumming is "we should not allow this - it's degenerate gameplay", but when it comes to the other, he goes "that's the way some people play, let's leave them to it".

 

[Prime Junta]

However Josh's treatment of savescumming is "we should not allow this", but when it comes to the other, he goes "that's the way some people play, let's leave them to it".

No, it's not. Again: he acknowledged that camping supplies failed in what he intended. He did not want players to trek back for more, but they did it anyway. That's why he revamped it for P2 (and made those other changes I don't like). That was the one bullet that you got right, remember?

 

[Mazisky]

Anyone knows if there are snowy places on Deadfire?

I've seen Jungle, coastal and desert.

I mean actually in the game, not just lore

 

[Lacrymas]

However Josh's treatment of savescumming is "we should not allow this - it's degenerate gameplay", but when it comes to the other, he goes "that's the way some people play, let's leave them to it".

That's the thing, though, the camping supplies thing would've worked to prevent save scumming if they didn't allow backtracking. The resting system would've been tremendous incline had they not designed the game around 2 hypothetical (and not so hypothetical) audiences - grognards and normies. Josh obviously wants to create a good system that isn't degenerate and fixes the issues the IE games has, but sabotages his own efforts by allowing trekking back. I don't know how he hasn't developed a mental disorder yet.

 

[Jimmious]

However Josh's treatment of savescumming is "we should not allow this - it's degenerate gameplay", but when it comes to the other, he goes "that's the way some people play, let's leave them to it".

That's the thing, though, the camping supplies thing would've worked to prevent save scumming if they didn't allow backtracking. The resting system would've been tremendous incline had they not designed the game around 2 hypothetical (and not so hypothetical) audiences - grognards and normies. Josh obviously wants to create a good system that isn't degenerate and fixes the issues the IE games has, but sabotages his own efforts by allowing trekking back. I don't know how Josh hasn't developed a mental disorder by now.

How would you disallow backtracking? Honest question... I'm frequently wondering how would someone promote persistence

 

[Lacrymas]

How would you disallow backtracking? Honest question... I'm frequently wondering how would someone promote persistence

By literally not allowing you to exit the dungeon? Slammed shut door, rocks fall and prevent your return, the baddie erects a barrier etc. Or have a point-of-no-return somewhere in the dungeon. At most I'd program the game to autosave outside the dungeon the first time you enter it, so there's your compromise for the droolies.

 

[Mazisky]

Also, i cannot understand:

Josh said they made preset maps for random encounters in every biome, but aren't those supposed to happen only in cities and sea? Why different biomes maps then?

 

[Lacrymas]

Since you have a figure representing the party on the land maps as well, I'm assuming the random encounters can happen everywhere on the overland map.

 

[Got bored and left]

Also, i cannot understand:

Josh said they made preset maps for random encounters in every biome, but aren't those supposed to happen only in cities and sea? Why different biomes maps then?

You can get off the ship and explore islands and whatnot on the world map, can't you? Or am I misremembering?

 

[AwesomeButton]

A question to everybody:
Does backtracking after every other encounter in order to be fully rested qualify as exploiting game mechanics, or does it not qualify as exploiting game mechanics?

Minor health potions and Cure light wounds x10 after every fight.

This one in particular I don't consider a degenerate strategy. Using memorized spells and potions you bought/found has a cost, and it's up to the player to decide if he will pay the cost.

It's also not a no-brainer decision: you may have less healing abilities than you have damage sustained and have to prioritize who should be healed and how much. Maybe you want to save the potions for critical moments during combat, and use healing spells when out of combat, because of their casting time. Or you may want to go on without healing, it's up to you, and up to the situation.

The ability to freely backtrack, however, removes the point of any of these considerations - why heal yourself if you can backtrack, and are not too lazy to do so? In PoE there is no need to even backtrack - the game gives you free healing.

To me, this is the most important criteria: (2) Is rote, repetitive, boring, or otherwise unenjoyable. PoE stream-lined a lot of the tedious nonsense from the IE games. Can you trek across three or more loading screens to rest at the inn after every fight and then come back? Yes. Is there any reason to do so? In 99% of cases, fuck no. And as degenerate strategies go, it's a pretty inefficient one by comparison.

Enjoyable is subjective. As long you don't feel required to backtrack (because you can't come up with a better strategy) why shouldn't you?

I'm not taking this to the extreme however - if too many degenerate strategies are possible, more people will be tempted to use one or more of those strategies. It's ultimately down to the pairing of player and game

 

[Infinitron]

You can get off the ship and explore islands and whatnot on the world map, can't you? Or am I misremembering?

Obviously you can get off the ship, but as far as we've heard until now, world travel where you actually move your party on the world map (as opposed to just pointing and clicking on a location like PoE1's world map) is only at sea. So the assumption has been that random encounters only happen there.

 

[Got bored and left]

You can get off the ship and explore islands and whatnot on the world map, can't you? Or am I misremembering?

Obviously you can get off the ship, but as far as we've heard until now, world travel where you actually move your party on the world map (as opposed to just pointing and clicking on a location like PoE1's world map) is only at sea. So the assumption has been that random encounters only happen there.

I know, of course - I meant that world travel can happen on land and you have a little dude that walks around islands, representing your party, which would mean that you could get random encounters at shore outside cities. But I may be imagining things, carry on.

 

[Sannom]

Obviously you can get off the ship, but as far as we've heard until now, world travel where you actually move your party on the world map (as opposed to just pointing and clicking on a location like PoE1's world map) is only at sea. So the assumption has been that random encounters only happen there.

Like ArtB, I'm pretty sure we've seen video in which world travel as you describe it is also done on land.

 

[Infinitron]

Ah, right you are:

 

[AwesomeButton]

Also, i cannot understand:

Josh said they made preset maps for random encounters in every biome, but aren't those supposed to happen only in cities and sea? Why different biomes maps then?

you can travel overland, similar to Fallout/2, and you can get random encounters during those travels.

However Josh's treatment of savescumming is "we should not allow this", but when it comes to the other, he goes "that's the way some people play, let's leave them to it".

No, it's not. Again: he acknowledged that camping supplies failed in what he intended. He did not want players to trek back for more, but they did it anyway. That's why he revamped it for P2 (and made those other changes I don't like). That was the one bullet that you got right, remember?

I got "right" all of them.

What he realized and revamped (which we haven't even tested yet) is not relevant because I am referencing his talk during PoE's development, not during Deadfire's development. I thought that was obvious.