Interview A Decadent Interview at RPG Dot

[TheGreatGodPan]

He may or may not answer...

I will answer, but I'm too busy at the moment. No time at all.

Well it's been over a week, and you've posted in other threads, but not not this one since. I can't say I'm impatiently waiting because your comments got me to download Prelude to Darkness, which I haven't even gotten around to installing. Just commenting on the oddness of the situation.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Nice interview, good luck, etc.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well it's been over a week, and you've posted in other threads, but not not this one since.

Since someone gives a damn...

I would only sugest two things. When a dialog has a critical strike, persuasion or another check put a chance percent near the tag so that the player knows if it's easy or not to do the action. Or perhaps a percent interval like this 10%-50% or just simply a word like (persuasion hard) or (persuasion very hard).

That would ruin the element of the surprise - :shock: When you are thinking of sneak attacking someone, I don't think you should know what your odds really are, and how fast your seemingly slow opponent may turn out to be.

That's probably the first explanation of why you're doing things the way you are where I don't really understand where you're coming from.

As Claw said, choose an action, not an outcome. Displaying the odds (which is possible, btw) shifts the focus from "Hmm, should I take this opportunity? Is my skill high enough? Would I be able to kill him in one strike? I wonder what would happen if I fail?" to "90% chance! Sweet! The fucker is as good as dead" or "10%? You've gotta be fucking kidding me! What a useless option!")

That doesn't mean that you are completely in the dark, of course. As you play any game, you learn the actual value of your skills through trials and errors, and thus can estimate your chances. Take Fallout, for example. Skills max is 200, stats max is 10. While 5 (50%) in any stat is kinda poor to average at best, 100 in any skill is pretty damn good. Your learn that by playing the game, figuring out when you should proceed with caution and when you can stop being afraid as you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, because now you are the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.

Should you fail the assassination roll, you won't have to reload. The raiders still need someone to negotiate the ransom, but the price will go up.

I'm playing Avernum 4 in my spare time (mostly at work). Every now and then the game offers you a choice ("would you like to fuck with that evil looking altar?"). You have no idea what would happen and that adds a lot to the game. If the game tells you "Trust me, you don't want to do that. The odds of living long enough to tell your tale of stupidity and greed are like 0.0001%", that would suck a lot of fun out of exploration and making uneducated guesses. In my opinion, of course.

Obviously the player must make decisions and control the PC otherwise you get a screensaver/movie, but to rely on the player skill and disregard the PC's skill by not giving some information about probable success just doesn't seem to fit your design ideologies.

No, when you, the player, make a decision to do something, you rely on your character's skills. Similarly, when you decide that your character should fight some hooligans, your decision is based on the assumption that your skills are more than adequate for the task. There is no percentage displayed over their heads before the battle, helping you to make a better decision. Instead your decision is based on your previous experience and a few extra points dumped into proper skills that you hope would ensure smooth victory and triumph over the forces of evil.

If VD were to do this, it would only be a good idea IMO if done as you suggest - i.e. calculating the odds through PC observation and information, not through the actual chance of success. Doing that well would be a can of worms as you say.

Agree. Adding some descriptions is a great idea and a great feature, however, based on the criticism of my writing, I have absolutely no faith in my abilities to do it right, so...

EDIT: It seems this entire discussion has been based on a completely untrue assumption:
That seeing [Persuasion] means a persuasion check will take place when you choose the option.

Apparently (2005) that's not true at all. Seeing [Persuasion] just means that line has appeared due to your persuasion skill level. The following (and the above) pretty much entirely misses the point. Oh well.
I'm not sure what I think of this - it seems a little strange on the face of it.

It means that the min requirements are met, i.e. that your character was skilled enough to figure it out or to try to do a certain thing. A check against your "opponent"'s abilities will still take place.

Basically, you shouldn't be given an Etiquette option if you have no clue what the word means. However, if you have some understanding of the concept, enough to apply it in a certain situation, a proper line will appear, giving you a chance to pull it off. So, going back to the beginning of this debate, if the assassination option appears, it means you have a chance (you have some Critical Strike skill and a weapon with <5AP speed equipped). The rest is up to you and your skills.

Actually, this ups my estimation of the game considerably. If you always know whether a gambit will work, there is zero gameplay to it; it is just watching a movie.

Agree.

 

[John Yossarian]

As Claw said, choose an action, not an outcome. Displaying the odds (which is possible, btw) shifts the focus from "Hmm, should I take this opportunity? Is my skill high enough? Would I be able to kill him in one strike? I wonder what would happen if I fail?" to "90% chance! Sweet! The fucker is as good as dead" or "10%? You've gotta be fucking kidding me! What a useless option!")

I don't think anyone suggested displaying actual chances of success. They have suggested giving the player information about what the character thinks his chances are, and this character thinking would be dependent on his skills. It is then up to the player to choose if he trusts his character's assessment or not. That is still gameplay IMO.
see it the same way as a character that might believe he is good with Energy Weapons, which is manifested by him not refusing to equip them when the player asks him to, but it is still up to the player to decide whether the character is good them, and whether he should use them.
Also I would have no problem with a dumbass character telling the player that facing 10 Super Mutants with a spear would have 90% chance of success. If the player is too stupid to realize that his character is not smart enough to be trusted, he should get killed. I don't see how that is diffferent from getting killed because you were too stupid to realize your character sucked with Energy Weapons.
btw VD, I think many people give a damn.

 

[galsiah]

I don't think anyone suggested displaying actual chances of success. They have suggested giving the player information about what the character thinks his chances are, and this character thinking would be dependent on his skills.

Sure, but I don't think it adds anything if the odds the player sees are e.g.:

Displayed_Chance = Real_Chance +/- (Random_Number / player_skill)
I.e., just taking the actual chance, then adding noise based on player skill.

I just don't see that being interesting or helping the gameplay. It just means that things go from pretty random at low skill, to non-decisions at high skill - all without any flavour. To do it properly you'd need to use player observations, not the actual chance of success - that way when a situation really should come as a surprise, it will.


VD: I don't think that writing limitations should put you off doing something like this. There is general agreement (even WBC ) that your writing is functionally fine - you get the relevant information across. The only debate is about occasional style issues.

Most of these situations could be based on fairly simple, factual descriptions. I don't think the style would matter much at all - even if it weren't ideal. It's certainly less important than for dialogues, since no NPC is saying the descriptions: there is no need for the player to deduce anything from the style - only what is described.

Obviously if you don't have time / don't think it's worth it / have some other problem with this, that's fine. I wouldn't let writing issues get in the way though.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

I second Galsiah on this point. The writing conveys everything necessary and right now the biggest allure of the game (a strong one!) is the apparent richness of NPC interactions. This seems like it would only improve them.

 

[John Yossarian]

I just don't see that being interesting or helping the gameplay. It just means that things go from pretty random at low skill, to non-decisions at high skill - all without any flavour. To do it properly you'd need to use player observations, not the actual chance of success - that way when a situation really should come as a surprise, it will.

I agree that observations would make it much more interesting, but it does seem like a lot of work. Still, I think the actual success way is a step in the right direction, especially if you have several skills that will affect how you see one thing (as long as it doesn't become too easy, even at the highest skills, which gives some resemblance of surprise)

VD: I don't think that writing limitations should put you off doing something like this. There is general agreement (even WBC ) that your writing is functionally fine - you get the relevant information across. The only debate is about occasional style issues.

Most of these situations could be based on fairly simple, factual descriptions. I don't think the style would matter much at all - even if it weren't ideal. It's certainly less important than for dialogues, since no NPC is saying the descriptions: there is no need for the player to deduce anything from the style - only what is described.

Obviously if you don't have time / don't think it's worth it / have some other problem with this, that's fine. I wouldn't let writing issues get in the way though.

I second all of this. Maybe it's too late for AoD, but VD if you do get to make a second game, I hope you consider adding something like this, your writting definately is good enough for it.