OwlCat approach to balance. They are 100% right!

[Cryomancer]

At 1:42:07

"much more important than balance is fun" (1:43:06)
"balance is a tool to archive fun, is never a end goal"

They say that the excessive focus on balance ends up creating a game where everything is homogenized and kills player agency. And they are completely right. For example, imagine a typical D&D 3.5/PF1e campaign full of undead. The fact that a paladin or a good cleric would have a much easier time dealing with then than a rogue focused on critical attacks and sneak attack or a water elementalist wizard makes perfectly sense. And allowing the player to play with this suboptimal builds and making then having a hard time playing the game makes perfectly sense and reinforces the game fantasy.

In Gothic 1/2, being a mage is way harder than a fighter yet the magical path is amazing in both games(not so much in 2 where it restricts you to be a sheep of innos lukly mods fixes it). Getting the ingredients, the scroll, talking to people to teach the spell to you and making a spell after that effort makes you treasure each spell way more than in a game where you can have hundreds of tier 9 scrolls in your backpack(PF:WoTR). In Dark Sun : Shattered Lands/Wake of the Ravager, Muls and Half Giants makes way better fighters than humans and it makes perfectly sense in the setting.

Imagine if VtMB devs had took away Nosferatu because it is too underpowered and Tremere because is too overpowered, how having less replay value in a short game would made it better?

I just hope that they never go PF2e Imo if Paizo forces 2e on then, they should pick any retroclone(mainly AS&SH and LoTFP), or adapt GURPS or any white wolf RPG. PF2e has all problems that plagues 5E with all problems that plagues 4E.

 

[agris]

This is like middle-schooler tier comments and analysis.

Yes, obviously; now take your analytical paradigm and apply it to the loosening of race, class and ability score restrictions on the abandonment of 2nd edition and adoption of 3.x.

 

[Cryomancer]

This is like middle-schooler tier comments and analysis.

Yes, obviously; now take your analytical paradigm and apply it to the loosening of race, class and ability score restrictions on the abandonment of 2nd edition and adoption of 3.x.

I agree that 2E is way better in class, race and ability score restrictions. However, only because 3E is not as great as 2E, doesn't mean that it is bad.

 

[agris]

Meredoth i appreciate your civility, but your treatment of banal statements by owlcat and framing them as praiseworthy, plus your general uncritical treatment of 3.5, all serves to steadily lower the bar of: (a) what is considered insightful and worthy of analysis, and (b) what is mechanically rich and deserves to be nurtured and illuminated through discussion.

The cumulative effect of people reading about 3.5-based games, without a critical look at what was lost on the transition from 2E, allows the lowering of the bar of quality and lets people accept what is objectively a worse mechanical system as “normal”.

It’s how decay occurs, through the lowering of standards. I hope you get the discussion points you were hoping for out of this thread, but I feel a moral obligation to point out that 3.x is an abomination compared to 2E and was not a fait accompli.

People should ask for more, not settle for less again and again and again.

 

[gurugeorge]

I was going to add something banal but now I feel intimidated

 

[KateMicucci]

And yet they chose to use Pathfinder instead of a fun system.

 

[Tyrr]

This is like middle-schooler tier comments and analysis.

Is that a dig at Josh Sawyer?

 

[Dr1f7]

good idea I hope they go ahead and make a fun game sometime

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So it was never...

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

It's questionable that they really follow this though as I didn't find their most recent game enjoyable. It's also hard to tell that this approach was really followed because they just spammed archetypes (many of which are worse than the base class in general or do very little to nothing to affect the gameplay compared to their base class--what's the point of including them?) and just spammed monsters to the point where most of the encounters are indistinguishable. Then there's the excessive length of the game and the mandatory HOMM5 minigame (not very fun at all; would rather just play HOMM5 instead) and all that text which I end up skipping because most of it is of no consequence.

 

[Fedora Master]

Well, they achieved neither balance nor fun with Wrath.

 

[Totktospit]

First of all, are you sure that they completely honest about topic? You have to assume that interviews are part of marketing and they can say what the crowd is want to hear at the moment.
The second point, is that Sawyer was not afraid of suboptimal builds. He somehow was terrified that players can make unviable builds. Which is quite difficult in modern days, IMHO, and can be only problematic if the game is too tedious to start it again.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's another thread where Victor rants about Gothic 2, FNV and Dark Sun?

 

[DY050503]

How about some balance on stories and stages? That 'looking around' with mouse middle button to find a way is really not interesting as they think.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

At 1:42:07

"much more important than balance is fun" (1:43:06)
"balance is a tool to archive fun, is never a end goal"

They say that the excessive focus on balance ends up creating a game where everything is homogenized and kills player agency. And they are completely right.

What! They did BALANCE anon Aivu friend anon anon! They did! What! They did BALANCE anon Zippy Magic anon! They did! What!

 

[Cryomancer]

I didn't find their most recent game enjoyable.

I liked it but as I've said. If you aren't into power fantasy, WoTR is a waste of time. IMO WoTR is too bloated to be fun. I loved kingmaker and still like more kingmaker over WoTR.

Aivu friend ! !! They did! What! They did BALANCE

Yep. You are right, sadly Aivu is worthless now. Apparently OwlCat wanna only Lich and Angel mythic path to be great...

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Yep. You are right, sadly Aivu is worthless now. Apparently OwlCat wanna only Lich and Angel mythic path to be great...

Thank you anon! You are a good anon! It is many heart fracture anon! It is! You are a good anon!

 

[Humbaba]

Yes, obviously; now take your analytical paradigm and apply it to the loosening of race, class and ability score restrictions on the abandonment of 2nd edition and adoption of 3.x.

Can we agree though that restricting Paladins to humans is gay?

 

[Delterius]

I kinda wish there weren't so many shitty class choices or mandatory stuff in Wrath tbh. The game is all about 'here is fifty useless feat choices except for the ones that let you one shot everything'. But then again Pathfinder is a dumbass system like that. It's no wonder the mythic system made things worse.

 

[Harthwain]

He somehow was terrified that players can make unviable builds. Which is quite difficult in modern days, IMHO, and can be only problematic if the game is too tedious to start it again.

If you have to start again, then it means you have an unviable build, doesn't it?

 

[Comte]

Owlcat are a bunch of globohomo fags that make bloated buggy software.

 

[Totktospit]

He somehow was terrified that players can make unviable builds. Which is quite difficult in modern days, IMHO, and can be only problematic if the game is too tedious to start it again.

If you have to start again, then it means you have an unviable build, doesn't it?

Yes, it is. I meant that most games already make chalenges lighter to guarantee the success as first point. And the second one is that I indeed will refuse to play many games again If I will make unviable build, because of sheer amount of dialogues to skip and trash combat to deal with. That is the main problem with games, not balance.

 

[Harthwain]

And the second one is that I indeed will refuse to play many games again If I will make unviable build, because of sheer amount of dialogues to skip and trash combat to deal with. That is the main problem with games, not balance.

I think all of what you've mentioned is a problem and a failure on the part of a game designer.

 

[LannTheStupid]

The cumulative effect of people reading about 3.5-based games, without a critical look at what was lost on the transition from 2E, allows the lowering of the bar of quality and lets people accept what is objectively a worse mechanical system as “normal”.

It’s how decay occurs, through the lowering of standards. I hope you get the discussion points you were hoping for out of this thread, but I feel a moral obligation to point out that 3.x is an abomination compared to 2E and was not a fait accompli.

And this reminds me of some art experts who can distinguish between genuine van Gogh and a good imitation. Yes, it is very important for those who actually own such paintings and use them as the storage of value; however, it is completely irrelevant for plebs, to whom I proudly belong.

The same is true here. I don't play table top. I don't care about table top mechanics. Neither do I care about intricate evolution between various D&D editions.

What I do care about is the state of computer games based on some of D&D mechanics and the ideology of their creative designers. I grew to despise Sawyerish "no dump stats" attitude and praise what Owlcat Games are doing. Ms. Yulia expressed the approach that I am fond of; it does not matter how this approach relates to some decisions made by Gygax fans 25 years ago as long as Owlcat make games that implement "fun over balance" idea.

 

[LannTheStupid]

The game is all about 'here is fifty useless feat choices except for the ones that let you one shot everything'.

What's wrong with that? I mean - you might not like it, but I do. We both paid the same money for the game; so, there is no meaningful way of enforcing one opinion over another.