72 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

Touche, I was referring to the Edmonton Studio

[Allan Schumacher]

Probably like playing an Assimar in NWN2

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm getting the impression that a bit of you wants this to fail....

[Allan Schumacher]

Cimeas wrote...
Allan, I don't 'want' Eternity to fail. In fact, the team at Obsidian have made some fantastic games, including Mask of The Betrayer and Alpha Protocol, which I have very much enjoyed. I simply think that if they didn't try so hard to make a game stuck in the past, if they conceded a few 'modern' features, then they could easily have gotten much more money from a publisher, especially after the story-driven RPG resurgence with ME3, DA:O/DA2, Deus Ex and The Witcher 2 over the past three years.

This is what I like about Kickstarter.  Obsidian DOES want to make this game.  The best developers are the ones making the games that they want to make, because you bring in that passion.  Furthermore, there appears to be a market for it too!

[Allan Schumacher]

Yrkoon wrote...

In other words, you want a game based on the spirit of modern RPGs. That's fine, but that's not what PE is about, and even if some publisher were to approach Obsidian and hand them a $50 Million check and say: here you go. no strings attached, they STILL wouldn't turn PE into a DA:O clone.... because that's not the point of the game!

Project Eternity is being designed to recreate the magic of the old IE games. Nostalgia IS a major, and deliberate element here. And Personally I wouldn't have bothered donating a single penny if they had announced PE as the Next hot and sexy evolutionary big thing.

To be fair, nostalgia is a driving factor in providing motivation for people to contribute the kickstarter.  For all we know they have had other ideas as well, it's just that the Infinity Engine style of game doesn't restrict the goals they have for the game, while appealing to those that want a game more like the older games.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think nostalgia is still the right word. I mean, they could have gone old school in the sense of maybe, Ultima VII or something hehe. Many see the 1998 period as a sort of Golden Age and certainly a resurgence in the PC RPG genre, so appealing to that type of game is going to have some degree of followers.

Stating taht they were going to make Alkabeth again might not have garnered quite the support haha.


As for Sawyer's Updates, I do think that some of the similarities to Black Hound isn't an accident.  He's (presumably) wanted to make something like that for probably the better part of a decade.  The team is going to run with ideas they find exciting.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 24 septembre 2012 - 05:55 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I liken it to being similar to the first Deus Ex or Bloodlines (especially since Cain developed Bloodlines)

[Allan Schumacher]

@Beerfish Are you referring to the Spirit feeding mechanic (I enjoyed it)

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 24 septembre 2012 - 07:43 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Beerfish wrote...
Yes indeed I am.  You could get to a point especially with a mage as I recall where you are essentially totally screwed.  I had to make choices my character did not want to make just to keep me going. 

That's actually what I liked about it haha.

[Allan Schumacher]

Agree!

[Allan Schumacher]

Christ I'm getting the feeling I'd need to draw a picture to drill this into your head. Yes, "reactivity!", "brief barks!" etc are all wonderful things however they're all under the banner of EGO-STROKING, meaning in this instance reactivity would be ego-stroking-reactivity, brief barks would be ego-stroking-brief barks.

An NPC that goes to the player and states "You shouldn't have done that. All you've done is cripple that poor man by giving him a hand out. You've handicapped his ability to provide for himself and others will take advantage of it" is an ego stroke because the NPC is specifically reacting the actions the player made and therefore, made the player the focus of the conversation.

This is not a positive remark, however. It's also effectively what Kreia says on Nar Shadda.

At no point does Vhailor praise the character. In fact, Vhailor will straight up override your decision with Trias. But what can be done is have Vhailor bend to the PC's will if you make well thought out arguments. You see his resistances and conviction start to break down. You can even get to the point where he loses the conviction that keeps him in existence and his essence just disappears... his faith in justice shattered.

This is all in the very first introduction to the player, and at no point is it Vhailor discussing how the player is awesome or kissing the player's ass. What it is is a conversation that allows a ton of player agency that works in a logical sense. If you completely botch the conversation, Vhailor will even attack you, and it's based on very specific motivations that are directly tied to the PC that Vhailor feels this need to attack the player.

Vhailor will straight up tell you your choice is unacceptable and make the choice for your at a key point, and it completely fits with the character and feeds into an amazing narrative and is not out of the blue at all. But it's still Vhailor reacting specifically to the player character and the player character's actions and decisions (and attributes for that matter)

[Allan Schumacher]

FTR I loathe the Vancian magic system. Frankly, I pledged to Obsidian so they could make the game they want to make, and if they want to have cooldowns, let them have cooldowns. I trust them implicitly to deliver a great RPG.


My empathy to Mr. Sawyer valiantly fighting the good fight though

[Allan Schumacher]

Yrkoon wrote...

But the whole point of Project eternity is to recapture the magic of those old school IE games. None of those games had cooldowns. And while they did INDEED try to emulate table-top, and failed to fully capture its mechanics and feel, they managed to create a new type of feel that kept RPG fans addicted for years.

MY question to Sawyer: What is your true vision for this game? Do you want to make a spiritual successor that reminds us of Planescape Torment and BG2 at the same time? Or do you really want to create a modern-type RPG that simply uses the old school ISO camera? If it's the latter then Jesus.... why Name-drop the IE games in every single damn video and interview about this game?

Considering I found the magic balance system of D&D to be a negative for the IE games, I consider the existence of cooldowns to not be part of the magic of the old school IE games.

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of reasons why people like those old games.  My favourite of the bunch, Planescape: Torment, frankly just had ****** poor combat and I typically opted to Annah stealth my way through the focused combat areas (oh goad Baator....).

I love tactical combat.  IWD games and BG games were fun, although a game like JA2 is what really takes the cake for Tactical Combat.   Even then, I often found myself getting to a point with games like IWD and BG1/2 where my spell selection ended up becoming pretty formulaic unless I had metaknowledge of upcoming.  I.E. these spells are the most versatile and hence I'll just take another one of the same when a new spell slot opens up.

While I don't have any intrinsic love/hate for AD&D in general (although in retrospect, martial classes sure were quite passive to play in the IE games), there are actually people that love the IE in spite of not liking the AD&D ruleset.  The rules were abstracted out enough, for them, to not detract enough from some of the other fantastic elements.  There's also those (I was in this camp in large part) that frankly didn't have any PnP experience with the games.  I loosely had seen AD&D style rules in some of the Gold Box games (though I played most of them after Baldur's Gate), but many of the mechanics I had to learn and wrap my head around.


I noticed the same thing with Wasteland 2 and it's one thing I find actually quite interesting.  Fargo (Sawyer) will go and say he wants to make a game akin to the old Wasteland (Infinity Engine).  What it seems many people do is go "Yes!  I loved those games" and then tend to assume there's some sort of consensus between all the people that would love those types of games.  In other words, they all loved those games for the same reasons.  As we're seeing with both games, that just isn't the case.

I have often seen claims around the internet (not just BSN) that the IE games appealed mostly to fans of AD&D, it certainly hasn't been the case in my experience simply because in my experience most people that I know and love the IE games have simply never played any sort of PnP games.  They're video gamers first and foremost.  And the IE games are pretty darned fun video games.


So I've always disagreed with the idea that some have that there was a consensus for what it was that made the IE games awesome.  This is why people that loved BG2 can love a game like DAO, ME, or even DA2, and feel it still gives them that same feeling, while there are others that love BG2 that feel games especially like ME and DA2 to be complete atrocities in comparison.  Both these groups love the IE games though, and many of them have probably even pledged support via the kickstarter.

IMO there isn't even really consensus between the IE games for what it is that those deliver.  The Icewind Dale games are my least favourite, though IMO they have the best combat.  Torment is by far my favourite, which has pretty poor combat.  BG is kind of a mix, though I prefer BG2 because it had less "random wandering" and a much stronger narrative (and a fantastic villain!).  BG2 also added in interesting characters that would actually talk with you and holy crap, these romances are pretty cool too.  I remember tons of threads of people debating whether Jaheira, Viconia, or Aerie was the best romance story (Jaheira was btw ), as well as lamentations (rightly so IMO) from people that felt women got the shaft as Anomen was pretty crap.

Icewind Dale focused around creating a full party from scratch.  Baldur's Gate had a protagonist, with a wealth of options for joinable party members.  Torment had much less companions, but zonkers were they interesting and well written!


So what exactly *is* "the magic of the IE games?"  It's true that AD&D is consistent between them (well technically IWD2 was 3rd edition), but is that really what the consensus loved about it?  If it was a different ruleset would they not have been as good?  I mean, for me the only magic style in BG2 that I didn't think had some pretty silly, artificial, and arbitrary rule mechanics was the Sorcerer.  Which I'm guessing many of the bigger fans of AD&D style magic would adamantly disagree with me about.  Yes, this is probably because I was more used to a game like Ultima for its magic system (resource usage, with both mana and reagents being required to cast spells).  This idea that I could "know" a spell but would need to "memorize it" was such a foreign and weird concept for me.  I was able to suspend my disbelief a little bit more for Clerics when I learned that their spells were granted to them by a deity (i.e. a source that allows me to mentally explain away the arbitrary requirement).

I have often said that the only real way BioWare could make a game that satisfied the largest proponents of the "old school" gamer crowd that loved their earlier games would have been to pretty much rerelease BG1/2 with pretty much no changes, because I always felt that different types of people loved the games for different reasons.


What I love about Obsidian as a developer (and going back to their Black Isle roots), is more about the improved player agency and reactivity.  And not just reactivity in terms of player choices, but even character builds.  My attributes made a more obvious difference in the narrative of PST than they did in BG2.  I have huge amount of faith in Avellone, Sawyer, and even Cain, to be able to deliver a type of game experience that will be pretty damned fun.  It'll be in the vein of the IE games, in that it'll be a larger party where the player has full control with more tactical combat, in an isometric perspective.  There will be party members that (especially based on Obsidian's history) will be interesting and well written, and it'll all synergize together into something that is pretty much greater than the sum of its parts.  The finer details are a lot more variable to me, because I've seen people like Sawyer talk a lot about game mechanics and I've seen how methodical he can be, and Tim Cain has shown he has quite the attention to detail for coming up with interesting rule systems.  Enough for me to let them make the game that they want to make because by working on something that one wants to work on that passion and enthusiasm is more likely to take hold.


It sucks for the people that feel that, to them, the details of the combat rule systems for the IE games is what they love so much about those types of games.  For some it'll probably be a deal breaker and unfortunately for Obsidian they may even dial back or outright cancel their pledges.  I definitely don't want them to change their mind on the issue, however, because in that sense they've just replaced a big name publisher with fans that are now acting in place of the publisher.  I do feel that they have a responsibility to make a game that they feel encompasses what it is they love about the IE games from a high level (otherwise people lose faith in Kickstarter type model), but at the same time maybe this is the limitation of a kickstarter type of project?  THe idea of a large scale consensus for what makes a game great is very, very difficult to come by IMO.



Anyways, wall of text point of time so I'll stop things here (I'm also getting tired).  I still think the game will be great and fun, but if you have concerns that you're no longer comfortable contributing, then I would thank Obsidian for sharing the details so you can make a more informed decision and make any adjustments you feel are necessary.  You'll still be able to pick up the game after release when more information is available and hopefully it's a great one.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 03 octobre 2012 - 04:32 .

[Allan Schumacher]

And that's where Cooldowns come in. They're an action RPG mechanic. They promote intensity; They facilitate uninterruptable gameplay flow; they remind the player of the game's ticking clock. This is such a *wrong* mood.

A cooldown is simply a resource mechanic. It can be instituted with any sort of arbitrary randomness that the vancian magic system requires. I do not believe that a cooldown is inherently action RPG. Why must it be?

--BG1 probably wouldn't have lost a whole lot... well, except for the fact that it's a low level campaign and a cooldown system would have rendered half the character classes moot. I mean, why be An archer and suffer from missing your opponents with your underpowered arrows, when you could just be a mage and use magic missile, every 6 seconds for at least double the damage, and without the possibility of ever missing. Also, the story would have needed to be redesigned to accomodate Cooldowns. Remember: Gorion was kicking Serevok's ass before he ran out of spells and had to use his dagger....against a master swordsman.... And so he died.

I'd disagree Gorion was "kicking Sarevok's ass." Besides, Gorion still loses if all of his spells just happen to be on cooldown for the next minute (let alone if it was 2 or 3 minutes), given how fast that fight is.

There's an implicit assumption that everyone makes that because a resource is on cooldown, it must be a short cooldown that trivializes resource management. Frankly, a punitive cooldown system could be set up to make spell casting much more restrictive and punitive, as the resource could be just as arbitrarily more expensive and risky than the magic system BG2 had.

[Allan Schumacher]

Remember to keep enough organs to live so you can play it!

[Allan Schumacher]

Too much time is not possible.

[Allan Schumacher]

Interesting that they get a copy of a completely different project's game.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think they're getting a bit convoluted with their contribution tiers TBH. Seems to be a lot of confusion.

And for some reason the idea that contributing to this kickstarter provides incentives via delivery of future projects above and beyond the base game seems additionally risky IMO.

[Allan Schumacher]

MOTB is pretty darned good.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think I know what's kind of bothering me about some of the stretch goals now.

Admittedly I didn't follow something like WL2 so maybe they did it there too, but it really seems like many of the goals are a direct response to issues that were raised on the forum and whatnot. Like the people all sad and upset that Paladins didn't seem to exist.


It's not a deal breaker for me by any means, but it seems more that the goals are reactive than proactive. Maybe they didn't have as much of an idea so being entirely proactive isn't fair, but I'd hate for Obsidian to feel obligated to be doing things explicitly because a group of fans were simply clamouring for them if it was originally not something that they wanted to do.

I think Obsidian is super creative, and the idea of just bringing back equivalents to the AD&D classes and whatnot is a bit disappointing. I would have, for example, preferred that Paladin just be a subclass of Priest (or even Fighter). I actually liked the idea they had for just 4 bases classes with interesting subclasses, but eh if Obsidian wants to do it this way they are allowed to.

Hopefully it's still the game that Obsidian fully wanted to make before all this started. I'll never know

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't have any fundamental issue with Paladins existing, I just don't mind some deviation from the standard archetypes.

"Mage" "Fighter" "Priest" and "Rogue" are vague enough that there's still a ton of freedom with what those classes represent.

Now that we're effectively getting Paladins and Chanters (bards...), those types of classes start to become more and more specialized. I am primarily a Paladin player when I play the IE games, but the joys of not using a license or an IP is the idea of not being constrained.


Though frankly, I saw a lot of this in the Double Fine and Wasteland kickstarters too, where the appeal to nostalgia results in a lot of people asking/hoping/insisting on the finer details of said nostalgia (this class must be in, you must have this game idea, it better by Psychonauts 2).

I'm typically the type of person that goes "If Tim Schaefer decided to do something familiar and make a sequel to a different game, we wouldn't have had Psychonauts!" I think it'd be awful if Black Isle made some Forgotten Realms game instead of Planescape: Torment. Part of what I loved about these settings is that they were fresh and new, so when I hear of a game "inspired by the IE games" I'm pretty liberal on what that means. I love to play Paladins, but maybe there's something else out there that I love to play even more and I just haven't played it yet! Before I made my first Paladin in Eye of the Beholder, I'm sure there was some other archetype that I preferred to play in fantasy adventure games.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yrkoon wrote...

But really, there's no such thing as a "fresh new class". The D&D based classes are so numerous, so varied, and so vague that it's virtually impossible to create something  that D&D hasn't already covered at least 20 years ago.

At their most creative, non D&D based games can sometimes manage to take an already established D&D class and just:  1) give it a new name;  or 2) shake off a few of the cliches  associated with this class.

But they can never  actually create anything new and still mantain a fantasy setting.

I know there's still tropes, but I disagree that you can never do anything new.  Even if it's just a fresh take and derivation.

That's what I like about more vague classes though.  Once you call something a Paladin, there's stricter expectations.  If the Paladin isn't a holy warrior, people will be upset.  They could try doing a more historical adaptation (from France's history) as a leader type of character without religious conotations, but I think that would just end up making people angry.

Kind of like how you cannot call a dwarf an elf, because people have expectations for what a dwarf is.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'd wager likely "not an issue"

[Allan Schumacher]

Artists never cease to amaze me for how well they can craft things though.

[Allan Schumacher]

Let's be fair Obsidian themselves admit that was their fault. Kotor 2, New Vegas and Alpha Protocol weren't since the QA wasn't handled by them and in Kotor 2's case the devtime was cut by 6 or 7 months.

Was KOTOR 2's development time actually "cut?"