sawyer wants rpg to evolve

[frajaq]

stuff

my nigga have you heard about Disco Elysium??????

 

[Theldaran]

Well, back then developers often took an existing PnP system and adapted it. This should be the way to go. The major hindrance is that PnP studios are for the most part absurdly small and powerless to elicit an adaptation of their system. But in all justice there should be a decent adaptation of the Cthulhu system, the OGL systems, and every popular one. It is a mystery to me why the Galactica makers didn't capitalise on the show's success and made a CRPG. They did a PnP game, which is the cheaper and safe solution. Such system should be interesting to bring over to PC, among others that release each year.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Nah Josh would never want to work at Bethesda, he said previously he doesn't want to work in AAA games

His favorite game is Hitman, not a proper cRPG.

He said on multiple occasions, both on writing and video, before and after Pillars, that “he was completely okay with triple-A games”.

Feargus praised Skyrim on multiple interviews.

Tim Cain has hundred of hours on popamole games such as FO3 and Skyrim.

Tim Cain said that we need to make cRPGs simpler, and replace stats/skills with geometric shapes.

It’s obvious that Obsidian choose this BG clone thing to milk ex-Bioware fans because they didn’t manage to get a contract with a big publisher.

Obsidian understood that ex-Bioware fans are brain-dead people with no self-esteem, so they can shit all over them at the same time they are using their money in the vain hopes of attracting big publishers; and they will still be defended by the same people they are using—battered wife syndrome.

 

[JarlFrank]

stuff

my nigga have you heard about Disco Elysium??????

Yes and I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Cael]

The evolutionary path of the current cRPG landscape would benefit from a RPG where there is NO CHOICE in class or race. You are THE AVATAR. You start with 18 Strength, 18 Dex, 29 Int. You have 3 companions with you at the start of the game (who all have fixed stats and even personalities, and you do NOT get to choose them), and you have been dumped in a completely new part of the world that no one from your society has ever seen before (as far as you know).

Now, play the game and unfold the story yourself. No hand holding, no NPCs to tell you what to do next. Just explore the damned country and find out yourself.

Fuck all that 9 races, 20 classes, 8 stats, 30 skills bullshit.

 

[Theldaran]

Fuck all that 9 races, 20 classes, 8 stats, 30 skills bullshit.

Those things are pretty mandatory for the likes of Pathfinder or D&D adaptations. Because if you don't have dozens of character building options, the game looks cheap.

But that's not the only way to do things, of course, and it's a thorough and unpleasant way for the devs.

Also, only try to give lots of character options if your system is any good (like D&D).

 

[frajaq]

His favorite game is Hitman, not a proper cRPG.

Game developers aren't allowed to like game of other genres? What? If you played Blood Money you probably would realize why Josh likes it so much, it's extremely open in how to deal with situations and your assassination targets, a good feature for RPGs

He said on multiple occasions, both on writing and video, before and after Pillars, that “he was completely okay with triple-A games”.

Fair enough, I don't know if "being completely okay with triple-A games" automatically translates to "Oh god please I want to work in a triple-A game so much, working on the PoE series has been torment for me" though

 

[Black]

The last time Obsidian tried something new was... SoZ? Overworld map party skill checks and party dialogue?

 

[Infinitron]

Now let's have a discussion about whether overworld ship combat is an evolution of the genre.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Jesus guys, you need to learn the difference between a normative statement and a positive statement. At no point does he say the industry should evolve toward Bethesda style walking simulators (normative), he simply says this has happened (positive) and is one example of evolution that found an audience.

 

[Roguey]

He said on multiple occasions, both on writing and video, before and after Pillars, that “he was completely okay with triple-A games”.

Playing them, sure, working on them, not really.

As far as small projects go, personally, I think that the future of console development looks moderately insane for independent studios. When OEI was at its largest (I think maybe in the realm of 140 people), I started not knowing who people were, which was not a great feeling. On our larger teams, I also stopped being able to talk to people about their work every day. I was able to do that on F:NV usually, but often not with great depth.

I like the feeling and flexibility of smaller teams and I like that everyone tends to be much more aware of what's going on. I hope that OEI can have projects of various (peak) sizes going on in the future.

New Vegas at max was around 60.

By the by, JES and I diverge here. I like being one among many, lost in the crowd, and being known among a smaller crowd makes me miserable.

 

[Cael]

Fuck all that 9 races, 20 classes, 8 stats, 30 skills bullshit.

Those things are pretty mandatory for the likes of Pathfinder or D&D adaptations. Because if you don't have dozens of character building options, the game looks cheap.

But that's not the only way to do things, of course, and it's a thorough and unpleasant way for the devs.

Also, only try to give lots of character options if your system is any good (like D&D).

Who said anything is mandatory? I create 3.5 settings all the time for tabletop.

In one of them, a post-Apocalyptic setting, there are no wizards, no clerics, no paladins, no elves, no half-elves, no half-orcs, halflings are highly restricted, Knowledge (planes) doesn't exist for starting characters, and over a dozen spells (entire spell TYPES) were taken out.

In another, if you were not a human or human-like race, you get burnt at the stake. You are a wizard or a druid in the wrong nation, you get burnt at the stake. You get outed as non-human, you are likely to get burnt at the stake (Bluff is a very important skill if you want to play a near-human race).

There is absolutely ZERO reason to give an ass load of options that complicate things for you because of the "it's not realistic/reactive!" crowd. STOP PANDERING TO THOSE SHITS. By making the hero of a singular race/class combination or a very select FEW possible race/class combinations, you make the illusion of reactivity by the game a lot more intimate with far fewer resources required. Spend the saved resources on C&C rather than trying to catch every possible reaction for a racist elf NPC who is only peripherally related to the plot. Focus on the damned story, not NPC minutiae.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I want RPGs to evolve too. They're stuck in a place where they've forgotten what made them great back in the 90s and 00s, and the highlights of the genre are still found in that era. There hasn't been any progress from there. Nobody has made a game that is on par with Arcanum when it comes to player choice and the game reacting to what kind of character the player is playing.

Age of Decadence did. Underrail also improved a ton of things, from crafting to stealh.

Game developers aren't allowed to like game of other genres? What? If you played Blood Money you probably would realize why Josh likes it so much, it's extremely open in how to deal with situations and your assassination targets, a good feature for RPGs.

The point is that his favourite game belongs to a different genre, and even in that genre he prefers a mainstream game as opposed to a classic, let's say, Desperados.

 

[2house2fly]

Remember, Josh is the guy who made the most condescending face ever when saying “lots of people like Fallout 3.”

No he didn't. He said "A lot of people liked Fallout 3" then he smirked at his understatement and said "a lot of people liked Fallout 3"

 

[Reinhardt]

Action games with dialogue choices are still just action games.

Anything not tb is action game.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Relevant:

(He chickened out and deleted the tweet later though.)

 

[Infinitron]

Evolving the genre or "innovation" can mean different things to different people.

When grognards talk about innovation, they usually mean something along the lines of implementing a basically familiar mechanic in a more ambitious, comprehensive and uncompromising way. For example, AoD's stat check-centric gameplay loop.

When game developers talk about innovation, they're probably more likely to be referring to entirely new modes of gameplay. Eg, "Let's make a turn-based RPG that's also multiplayer!" or "Let's add ship combat!".

Or in other cases, innovation might mean a new methodology for designing game content. For example, Alpha Protocol's honeycomb mission structure, or the topic-based companion relationship dialogue in Pillars 2 that Josh is so proud of. I think grognards aren't so interested in this because it doesn't relate directly to game mechanics with a challenge factor - at the end of the day, dialogue is still just dialogue.

 

[Theldaran]

Fuck all that 9 races, 20 classes, 8 stats, 30 skills bullshit.

Those things are pretty mandatory for the likes of Pathfinder or D&D adaptations. Because if you don't have dozens of character building options, the game looks cheap.

But that's not the only way to do things, of course, and it's a thorough and unpleasant way for the devs.

Also, only try to give lots of character options if your system is any good (like D&D).

Who said anything is mandatory? I create 3.5 settings all the time for tabletop.

In one of them, a post-Apocalyptic setting, there are no wizards, no clerics, no paladins, no elves, no half-elves, no half-orcs, halflings are highly restricted, Knowledge (planes) doesn't exist for starting characters, and over a dozen spells (entire spell TYPES) were taken out.

In another, if you were not a human or human-like race, you get burnt at the stake. You are a wizard or a druid in the wrong nation, you get burnt at the stake. You get outed as non-human, you are likely to get burnt at the stake (Bluff is a very important skill if you want to play a near-human race).

There is absolutely ZERO reason to give an ass load of options that complicate things for you because of the "it's not realistic/reactive!" crowd. STOP PANDERING TO THOSE SHITS. By making the hero of a singular race/class combination or a very select FEW possible race/class combinations, you make the illusion of reactivity by the game a lot more intimate with far fewer resources required. Spend the saved resources on C&C rather than trying to catch every possible reaction for a racist elf NPC who is only peripherally related to the plot. Focus on the damned story, not NPC minutiae.

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.

 

[Tovias]

He wants the RPGs to evolve and yet Pillars of Eternity took the worst parts of old rpgs gameplay and made it worse.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

You know what would be *really* radical? Taking what has come before, keeping what works fine and actually improving on it (especially on the flaws) in ways that make some damn sense rather than creating boring knock-off shovelware or Call of RPG or trying to re-invent the wheel in idiotic ways.
Or Christ I dunno, just not making things WORSE than before, and that goes for almost every Genre.

But muh modern sensibilities.

Evolving the genre or "innovation" can mean different things to different people.

When grognards talk about innovation, they usually mean something along the lines of implementing a basically familiar mechanic in a more ambitious, comprehensive and uncompromising way. For example, AoD's stat check-centric gameplay loop.

When game developers talk about innovation, they're probably more likely to be referring to entirely new modes of gameplay. Eg, "Let's make a turn-based RPG that's also multiplayer!" or "Let's add ship combat!".

Multiplayer is not an innovation in cRPGs, but pretending that is not detrimental to single-player gameplay is. Ship combat system is not an innovation, but pretending that this ship system is not a text-adventure gameplay is. Talk is cheap. There is nothing new under the sun. There is no need to fix what is not broken.

 

[mondblut]

Really, all I see here is that Sawyer doesn’t necessarily want the player’s narrative choices to be limited by their character builds. Your build explains how the character does things, not why they do them. Josh doesn’t seem to think the why should always be limited by the points you pumped into charisma/resolve or intelligence etc...

He could just have said "point buy sucks, fuck Fallout for making it mainstream".

I don't remember my Wizardry or Goldbox characters being limited by anything

 

[mondblut]

The evolutionary path of the current cRPG landscape would benefit from a RPG where there is NO CHOICE in class or race. You are THE AVATAR. You start with 18 Strength, 18 Dex, 29 Int. You have 3 companions with you at the start of the game (who all have fixed stats and even personalities, and you do NOT get to choose them), and you have been dumped in a completely new part of the world that no one from your society has ever seen before (as far as you know).

...
Fuck all that 9 races, 20 classes, 8 stats, 30 skills bullshit.

Fuck you.

 

[fantadomat]

stuff

my nigga have you heard about Disco Elysium??????

Yes and I'm looking forward to it.

Will you manage to roleplay a communist?

 

[Frozen]

romances incoming

 

[Black]

You know what's disgusting?
Developer apologists.