sawyer wants rpg to evolve

[Cael]

C&C makes the games replayable but putting a lot of options there also does. Look at the IE games. Lots of mods and lots of options out of the box. It makes a bountiful gaming platform.

Not everyone is willing to do it, but it will make your game stand that much taller.

Easy moddability is, of course, something that is up to the developer. I tend to make modules when I was doing programming back in the day. Makes it easier to chop and change things as required.

However, what you have in a RPG is a game with a story. Forget about what other people can add to it. I am talking the story straight out the box. NWN2 OC, for example. You aim the base game DIRECTLY at that story and that story alone. That is YOUR GOAL. Therefore, you only include classes and races that are directly relevant to that story. Khelgar, Neeshka, Elanee. That is 3 races and 3 classes already. Forget about any other race/class. Now, OC the is set after some sort of cataclysm of West Harbour. Instead of the vague timeline (which was of course, nitpicked to hell) and vague mother, let's make it a human mother, which means the character is human or near human. Add those races in.

What does that do immediately? It tightens up the timeline. You can be more precise as to when things happened, who was there, how were they affected, who saw what. It potentially give your mother more personality in your adopted father's recollections. When you run into a NPC that was flagged to insult you, you don't have to cater for all hundreds of permutations of race and class. Notice how, in the OC, in the first Chapter before you got to Neverwinter, the insults thrown your way were rather specific ("a demon, a dwarf and a harbourman walked into a bar..."), which is exactly what real people would do. After that, it all became personal. Just you and with the generic "harbourman" appellation.

Fixed characters makes for a tighter and more believable banter and world building. That was what made Serpent Isle so memorable. The companions interjected, they had personalities, they spoke up and other NPCs spoke to them directly. Which modern RPG has a NPC speaking directly to your companion asking for a song, and the companion responded by trying to be humble and modest, and had to be cajoled by multiple NPCs into singing (you have the option of encouraging him, too). The only one I can recall is actually... the much derided NWN2. Hilarious, isn't it? But here is the thing: Those companions were actually vital to moving the plot along. They get kidnapped, they sacrificed themselves for you, they get possessed. You can't have that when you have a dozen companions, of which only 3 is ever onscreen at a time.

 

[agentorange]

RPGs have already done this though. Age of Decadence in particular, recently, is about as radical a departure from "traditional" combat focused, Wizardry/D&D style RPG as you could get. But also games like VTMB put far more emphasis on differences in character background and how this effects the story, rather than combat classes. Even, like some people already mentioned, older Obsidian games like KOTOR2 or Alpha Protocol, would anyone call these games traditional or combat focused? (The very Storyteller system that VTMB is based off of already proves that even traditional pen and paper RPG systems have experimented in this direction). Of course a big studio is likely not going to make a game as uncompromising as AoD because by their nature they have to ensure it reaches a larger audience, I'd like to be proven wrong but whenever a big, or relatively big studio like Obsidian talks about "revolutionary" changes it never ends up being anything more than some window dressing on top of a basic, recognizable frame.

 

[Big Wrangle]

I'm starting to feel like Sawyer wants to make a game of another genre these days but is afraid of admitting it.

 

[Egosphere]

I don't get him, at all. Highest rated RPGs on here ( which is prob. as hardcore as it gets nowadays ) is PlaneScape Torment, Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Arcanum. All of them held narrative c&c in high regard and none of them were particularly strong in stats/combat. He seems to think the hardcore audience is comprised of D&D games' fans, which is not true. RPGs didn't 'evolve', they simply availed of better tech to make graphics flashier and the worlds bigger ( sometimes they would also replace good writing, a cornerstone of the genre in late 90s/ early 00s, with deranged gibberish a la Fallout 3 )

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

It’s pretty amazing that two random contextless quotes by JES can generate this level of in-depth and interesting analyses and deconstruction. The man truly is unquestionably the most important and influential RPG Developer working today

 

[Saduj]

I'm starting to feel like Sawyer wants to make a game of another genre these days but is afraid of admitting it.

Assuming the OP accurately reflects his attitude, it really sounds like he wants to make an adventure game.

He should probably just do that instead of whining about how RPG fans want RPGs to be RPGs.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I don't get him, at all. Highest rated RPGs on here ( which is prob. as hardcore as it gets nowadays ) is PlaneScape Torment, Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Arcanum. All of them held narrative c&c in high regard and none of them were particularly strong in stats/combat.

They are rocket science compared to Skyrim, FO3, etc., which is where the real money is at.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Wake me up when Sawyer discovers that D&D does all that and he has never managed to implement any of it despite many opportunities. Yeah, right. Hardcore players need to change guys. Not my fault. Really. I swear on me mum. It's those damn players, who rest spam and save scum and exploit badly designed games.

 

[Raghar]

You know what's disgusting?
Developer apologists.

I opened this thread at last page, and this is fist stuff I seen. Was something interesting in previous 6 pages?


BTW

Josh Sawyer, design director at Pillars of Eternity and Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian, would like to see the RPG genre evolve radically beyond its current state.

He did quite poor job in PoE. He ignored all inovation in UI. And he created uninteresting combat system, where stats have only mild influence.

 

[frajaq]

Sawyer needs to release the backer update soon, or anything

this place is gonna tear itself apart in rage before PoE 2 launches

 

[Black]

He ignored all inovation in UI

That's what he thought kickstarted backers wanted.

 

[Raghar]

He ignored all inovation in UI

That's what he thought kickstarted backers wanted.

Two thirds of shit in PoE can be explained by: "He THOUGHT kickstarter backers wanted it."

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Hah! Why did he think the backers wanted this stuff? I wonder...

Pre Pillars RPG Codex: give us walls of text! WALLS OF TEXT!!!! Muh walls of text!
Nu RPG Codex: who wants to read fucking walls of text?

Edit:

Sawyer: humans cannot be trusted, but my precious telemetry will never let me down.

 

[Naesaki]

Its almost like people don't even know what they want, and if they don't, Sawyer definitely won't.

 

[Roguey]

Assuming the OP accurately reflects his attitude, it really sounds like he wants to make an adventure game.

Not as he defines them.

adventure games typically don't allow you allow you to define and express your character's personality in a way that meaningfully changes the development of the story. An interactive story, to me, means more than just going through it via player input.

* Does the game allow you to develop and use tactics?
* Does the game allow you to develop and deploy a strategy?
* Does the game allow you to resolve conflicts in multiple ways?

If you answered "no" to all of the above, you're playing a "pure" adventure/puzzle game. If you answered "yes" to one or more of the above, it may be another sort of game, one that is still currently made.

 

[vonAchdorf]

His next game will be Shannara II?

 

[Roguey]

By the way, whose account is this?

https://twitter.com/HBJohnXuandou/status/987974357757579266

"RPG's could be something other than an RPG, but RPG fans are big meanies and don't like when we try to make them play an entirely different genre that they don't like." ~Josh Sawyer, Chief Jackass Obsidian Entertainment

 

[Sentinel]

By the way, whose account is this?

https://twitter.com/HBJohnXuandou/status/987974357757579266

"RPG's could be something other than an RPG, but RPG fans are big meanies and don't like when we try to make them play an entirely different genre that they don't like." ~Josh Sawyer, Chief Jackass Obsidian Entertainment

Dunno but he's a retard

Josh is right.

 

[FeelTheRads]

He sounds like a monocled gentleman.

Dunno but he's a retard

Yes, of course, genres are not defined mechanically. They are, according to Sawywer, defined by what the lowest common denominator believes.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Josh is right.

No, he is not; but it would be great if his criticism had actual targets, because character building and stats in most cRPGs are completely cosmetic, fluffy.

 

[bataille]

In the meantime, No Truce With The Furies is. just. being. made.

In the ZA/UMless world this little rant would hold value, but we can see what a bunch of open and blooming minds can do. Someone needs to stop talking and start living according to his own gospel!

 

[FeelTheRads]

In the meantime, No Truce With The Furies is. just. being. made.

In the ZA/UMless world this little rant would hold value, but we can see what a bunch of open and blooming minds can do. Someone needs to stop talking and start living according to his own gospel!

It's easier to just flap your gums about than actually do something and this is the thing Sawyer is best at, just yapping and yapping.

 

[frajaq]

By the way, whose account is this?

https://twitter.com/HBJohnXuandou/status/987974357757579266

"RPG's could be something other than an RPG, but RPG fans are big meanies and don't like when we try to make them play an entirely different genre that they don't like." ~Josh Sawyer, Chief Jackass Obsidian Entertainment

if he had any balls he would @ that at sawyer

 

[Thonius]

No truce/Disco Elysium + Pathfinder: Kingmaker.... I mean even if POE2 will be shit and obsidian crash and burn we'll have banner of CRPG flying high!

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

In the meantime, No Truce With The Furies is. just. being. made.

In the ZA/UMless world this little rant would hold value, but we can see what a bunch of open and blooming minds can do. Someone needs to stop talking and start living according to his own gospel!

The main problem with this "someone else must do what I don't have the balls to do" mindset is that you know that their games will be uninspired and derivative as a result. The problem with these kickstarter (fig?) games is that they are treated like products manufactured by checklist design. I posted this about Obsidian in another thread:

Taylorism design. Obsidians at work. "Everyone has a function. They are very efficient!"

What allows them to make complex cRPGs really fast is the same checklist design that makes their games suck in the first place. They could be called “Taylorism Entertainment”, because their games are created on assembly lines. The producer, artists, programmers, level designers, writers, which working furiously in their particular roles to ensure a bland and massive disjointed game. That’s why you shouldn’t lose any sleep expecting any progress in the encounter design, because the worker who did this job, just made what he was told, i.e., place a bunch of enemies on this area to fill the map. The real decline is no the absence of cRPGs of yore due to lack of funding, but the belief that a superficial checklist design made by people with such disdain for traditional cRPGs can be a substitute for the real article.

The same thing can be said about InXile. The only way to deliver a cRPG without thought is by checklist manufacturing design approach. You deliver a shell of a game with some features in it, and expect that the suckers will never notice the difference. This is what taylorist checklist design looks like: