New Infinity Engine style game in the works...

[Whipstitch]

You mean if they had told players that their video game wasn't a game, but Bioware's Story that they were just lucky enough to witness? I can't see that going over well either.

Only because people have dumb expectations and are perfectly capable of getting all huffy over false dilemmas. It's entirely possible to have a game AND a central storyline that the player only has nominal control of; in fact it's pretty much the only way to make a video game that has a baked-in story at all.

[Voss]

Speaking of false dilemmas....
the issue wasn't control over the storyline, at any stage. It was that the end toggle was completely separate and independent from the rest of the game, and regardless of which switch you flipped, you still got 'rocks fall, billions die' with slightly different flavor text. That the choices are also bullshit nonsense (everyone in the universe becomes magical cyborgs! Because weird FTL slingshots!) just makes it worse.

Decent storylines are always independent entities, having control over them would be fucking bizarre in a computer game, and also not very fun. But how you interact with that storyline is pretty important, and 'push the green button' is never going to be satisfying.

Bioware did a lot better with their older games (like Baldur's Gate and Jade Empire) in terms of story than Mass Effect and the piece of shit that is dragon's age. They were much more coherent and didn't involve forcing the player to hold the idiot ball to choke it down. And you could interact with the world while chasing the story.

[Chamomile]

For reference: The ending of Mass Effect was originally supposed to be that the actual mass effect that like 90% of the space gizmos uses, and which the game's encyclopedia goes out of its way to mention as being responsible for like everything, is slowly killing the universe somehow. There was an actual technobabble explanation but I forget what it is. The important part is, the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations to keep them from annihilating the galaxy by using the mass effect too much. Shepard's big choice at the end was supposed to be a choice between destroying the Reapers and counting on the people of the galaxy to figure out a solution within the few hundred years they had before they hit peak mass effect, or else to let the Reapers go on reaping in order to preserve life in the galaxy, even if that means sacrificing every civilization you've actually seen or interacted with.

Personally, I think that's a step up from magical space cyborgs caused by green explosions.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Well, they've absolutely nailed the Infinity Engine vibe:

Rest of the update here, but there's not much of interest in it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, when they said Infinity-Style game, I was hoping they were talking more in the structure of its object hierarchy (Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights are Infinity Style games under that definition) rather than the, you know, hard-to-see and overly dark tiny 2D sprite crap.

Color me not interested. I thought that the graphics and interface were easily the weakest parts of BG1 and BG2.

[Kaelik]

I would think the lesson From Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights 2 is that once you abandon the top down view and give control of a single character the game is much worse.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I would think the lesson From Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights 2 is that once you abandon the top down view and give control of a single character the game is much worse.

I'd like to refute this, but I can't. As much as I really don't like the aesthetics and the overcomplicatedness of the Infinity Engine for combat, I really can't think of a better game that handled 3rd-person free-roaming multiple-party real-time exploration combat.

Maybe it's just a limitation of adapting the D&D rules and it's really impossible to do much better than that.

[silva]

I'd like to refute this, but I can't. As much as I really don't like the aesthetics and the overcomplicatedness of the Infinity Engine for combat, I really can't think of a better game that handled 3rd-person free-roaming multiple-party real-time exploration combat.

Jagged Alliance 2 ?

[Pedantic]

I would think the lesson From Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights 2 is that once you abandon the top down view and give control of a single character the game is much worse.

I'd like to refute this, but I can't. As much as I really don't like the aesthetics and the overcomplicatedness of the Infinity Engine for combat, I really can't think of a better game that handled 3rd-person free-roaming multiple-party real-time exploration combat.

Maybe it's just a limitation of adapting the D&D rules and it's really impossible to do much better than that.

Have you tried any of Spiderweb Software's offerings? Geneforge seems to just about qualify. It's got tiny indie production values but the games tend to be pretty good.

[Avoraciopoctules]

We're not going to do things to intentionally antagonize or ignore the backers (or our audience in general), but we're also not asking them to design the game as though a) they all had a combined voice that showed a clear consensus and b) that if they did, that consensus would actually make a good game. We do pay attention to feedback and try to adjust when we think it makes sense (e.g. the GUI feedback, despite being all over the place, was very useful). We're designing the mechanics of the game to feel pretty IE-ish, but there are some things we're changing that not everyone will like. Some people don't like the existence of the Stash because they don't like the idea that you can carry everything you find (even if you can't access it). Some people don't like the idea that wizards and fighters are intended to start at similar levels of power and advance at similar levels of power because that's not how the classes work in 2nd Ed. or 3E/3.5. Some people want rogues to be weak in combat and dominate skills while other classes are great in combat and have crappy skills. We're not going to accommodate any of those wishes because we (honestly, usually I) believe they don't produce good gameplay.

We're going to be adding, removing, and adjusting things all the way through beta and beyond. Some of that will be based on user feedback and a lot of it will be based on internal observations. But when it comes to the basics, we don't really need people to help us figure out how to achieve the feeling of games we helped develop in the first place. If bits and pieces are off, I'm sure people will let us know and we'll be able to adjust, but we're not going to get the broad strokes wrong.

Wizards start with a small list of spells but can augment that list by finding them in the world (often in enemy grimoires). It's really required for wizards to make the most of their class.

We're actually not trying to create mirrored mechanics in how classes advance and gain abilities. That was the approach of 4E and, while perfectly valid, I don't think it's absolutely necessary to make classes feel balanced. Where I think pre-4E spellcasters got out of control wasn't because they had a lot of spells, but because even a handful of high-level spells were tremendously powerful and there really wasn't any equivalent for most non-caster characters. PE spellcasters are designed to give you the feeling of tremendous flexibility that came with 2nd and 3E/3.5 gave mid- to high-level casters, but they aren't going to make the fighter irrelevant, or the rogue irrelevant, etc. Casters aren't going to hit 12th level and flip a switch where they can start chucking "save or die"-style effects while everyone else just keeps swinging swords, for example.

Positioning is pretty important and rogues, specifically, have either Abilities or Talents (I can't remember which) where an attack from a hidden state is really bad news. Because wizards get Arcane Veil as a free Ability and because AV can be put up almost instantly, being able to *~ gank ~* them at the opening of combat can be very important. Rogues also have abilities like Escape, so if a pack of melee dudes rush in to aid their wizard buddy, rogues have options for getting out of immediate danger.

Even for non-rogue melee characters, if there's an enemy fighter standing near a front line, you really want to move around that dude or lady before combat starts because their MO will likely be to activate Defender mode and snag people trying to get past them. Overall, stealth is just really valuable for moving people into position before a fight starts. Even if you have characters who can't move close to the enemy, they can still move around within standard detection ranges and get into position before shit gets real.

Rogues gain a starting bonus to Mechanics and Stealth (and are the only class to get a bonus to both of those skills), but they don't have any special non-combat skills that could not be covered by other characters. You may wind up saying, "I wish I had taken more ranks in Mechanics!" but unless you build a party entirely out of characters who lack bonuses in those skills, you shouldn't specifically miss a rogue for skill reasons. PE rogues are not a "skill class".

The use of rogues is encouraged because against any target with a moderate or low Deflection, rogues make heads get flown (highest single-target, single-hit damage and bonuses to crit). Fighters and monks should be good counters to rogues. Fighters are a good counter because their Deflection tends to be high, they auto-regenerate Stamina, and they have built-in defenses against crits. Monks are a good counter because they use Wounds to power their special abilities and a lot of their special abilities pump out status effects that can sucker punch a rogue's weaker defenses (like Psyche). Monks also have an increased movement rate, so if a rogue uses Escape to hop away, a determined monk can catch up quickly.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Mask of the Betrayer was a great game, and one of the very few that could satisfy an actual 'evil' playthrough.

I fucking loved Mask of the Betrayer for the first 95% of the game, but the 'Good' ending was literally the most retarded and infuriating thing I've ever witnessed in any form of entertainment.

It's stupider than the original ending to NGE. It's stupider than the ending to Megaman Battle Network 4. It's stupider than the ending to Search For Dr. Livingstone. It's stupider than the ending to the Pain Invasion arc of Naruto. It's stupider than the ending to Final Fantasy 8. It's stupider than the ending to VOY: Threshold and Dear Doctor. It's stupider than the entire ending to ST: VOY. It's stupider than the ending to Attack of the Clones. It's stupider than the ending to Monster A-Gogo. It's stupider than even the default ending to Chrono Cross.

That's right, I went there. This game has dethroned Chrono Cross on the Lago Rage-O-Meter and it's solely because of that shitsucking, fetus-fucking ending. And it's only more infuriating because up to that point the story and themes is honestly one of the best to any story that I have ever fucking seen. Ending aside (and a couple of derp moments in the game like an unavoidably 'evil' bottleneck), it's the gold standard to how RPGs should be plotted from now on.

I've been tempted to write a review of that game for the past couple of weeks but I've given up on it -- it always just devolves into butthurt swearing. And since the game is otherwise fuckawesome aside from that it's not even entertaining nerdrage.

[Kaelik]

Av, what the fuck are you quoting?

[Avoraciopoctules]

One of the devs from Project Eternity, posting on SA. Here's a quote from the Obsidian forums, following a long debate about item degradation.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64048- ... try1348405

A few points of clarification:

* "Crafting" is one skill, but the crafting system uses multiple skills. I.e., the crafting system does not rely on the existence of the Crafting skill.
* Other than reaching the edge of a map to access the world map, there is no fast-travel in PE. That said, we will likely avoid the IWD-style 5-level dungeons without semi-regular shortcuts back to the surface (N.B.: this does not mean Skyrim-style loops).
* Most items do take up space in personal inventories! The party Stash is unlimited, but the Pack (made of personal inventories) is not. Crafting items (and quest items) always go into (and come out of) the Stash. We are doing this specifically to address common complaints about crafting items cluttering the inventory. Since crafting is typically done at camps or other non-combat locations, allowing the items to come out of the Stash doesn't seem to create any problems.

As I posted on SA, Crafting (the skill) and its associated subsystems (like durability) were the elements I felt least confident about in our skill system. I strongly believe that choices within an array should give the player reasonably balanced benefits. Because certain fundamental skills (like Stealth) can clearly benefit from multiple party members taking them and can contribute to party effectiveness in combat, I believe that other skills should do the same in their own way -- enough to make all of them appealing choices on multiple party members. This also has the benefit of making the uses of skills much higher-frequency than the individual uses that depend on designer content (e.g. unlocking doors or gaining a dialogue/quest option).

As an example, Medicine in its various Fallout forms contributes to the efficacy of stimpaks. There are many other places were Medicine can be used in quests and dialogue, but it has high-frequency use with stimpaks (in or between combats). It's a benefit that can apply to any character who has the skill, even if a character with a higher rating in a party may be "the guy" to perform the high-difficulty actions.

With all of the skills other than Crafting (specifically), those high-frequency benefits/uses were easy to come by. Crafting presented some difficulties and, as I wrote previously, I was concerned about the lack of systemic drains in the economy. Many people have mentioned a lot of potential uses for wealth. Most of them are great ideas and ones that we plan to use, but the vast majority of them are not systemic, rather content-dependent or scripted instances (e.g. bribes). However, it is clear from discussions here and elsewhere that the long-term balance of the economy is not a concern for most players who voiced their opinions -- and almost certainly not in the endgame.

Based on discussions on the forums and conversations I had with people on the team, we will be doing the following:

* Removing durability as a mechanic on items.
* Removing the Crafting skill (specifically). The crafting system and its associated mechanics will remain, as-is.

Ultimately, solving skill imbalance and endgame wealth abundance problems is not worth what players perceive as uninteresting and unenjoyable gameplay. I can still solve the skill imbalance problems by removing the problem skill. As for endgame wealth abundance, we will continue to create places for you to use wealth in the economy: unique items, the stronghold, optional quest/dialogue gates, etc. Ultimately, if those options go unused, I'll have to trust that the majority of players won't be significantly troubled by an excess of wealth in the late game.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

[sake]

fucking loved Mask of the Betrayer for the first 95% of the game, but the 'Good' ending was literally the most retarded and infuriating thing I've ever witnessed in any form of entertainment.

My problem was that the 'best' ending was only attainable by collecting the hidden multi-part macguffen that doesn't even get mentioned till the 3/4th of the game is over, instead of having it be based on your choices. The actual ending was... well. they had kind of wrote themselves into a corner with that plot, and they were probably hand cuffed by the license, so they couldn't do too much with it. Though, it would have been awesome if they have had the balls to actually do something interesting.

"And so after the battle, the hero and his cohorts destroyed the damned Wall, like they set out to do, freeing all the souls that had been absorbed into it. and breaking the yoke of cosmic servitude all life had been subjected to"

"However the Asshole Gods of Faerun soon threw a massive tantrum over the fact that they no longer had a metaphysical gun to hold up to the sentient races' heads in order to force them to suck divine cock, and so they all got together and destroyed reality, killing all life, so they could start over and build a new Wall. Because this is fucking Faerun, and the Gods really are that much of spoiled bratty children."

"Good job, Hero."

[Lago PARANOIA]

The actual ending was... well. they had kind of wrote themselves into a corner with that plot, and they were probably hand cuffed by the license, so they couldn't do too much with it.

I've heard that excuse on several other places but I'm not buying it. Because the True Evil ending has you fuck over the campaign setting in a much more grievous and awesome way.

[sake]

Because the True Evil ending has you fuck over the campaign setting in a much more grievous and awesome way.

The You Go Full Spirit Eater ending? Despite all the doom and gloom, that doesn't really screw up a fundamental part of the universe , like messing with the Wall does. You just become FR's big bad cosmic threat of the week for awhile, and kill a bunch of people and gods who will just be replaced in short order anyway.

Also, they tend to treat a game's good end as the 'canon' ending, so evil endings get to be a bit more big and dramatic while the good endings have to be sure not to change around too much beyond what could be covered or i(f needed) totally explained away in a brief footnote in the next game/book. So this is why Bioware/Obsidian's endings can often be summed up as Evil End: You Become the Evil Demon King and conquer everything for all time. Good End: You and (And your Love Interest, if any)travel far far away to go live in a cave or something in the middle of nowhere and never speak, interact with anyone, do anything, or have any major long term impact upon the world ever again, despite the fact that you are the richest and most powerful being on the planet.

[TheFlatline]

For reference: The ending of Mass Effect was originally supposed to be that the actual mass effect that like 90% of the space gizmos uses, and which the game's encyclopedia goes out of its way to mention as being responsible for like everything, is slowly killing the universe somehow. There was an actual technobabble explanation but I forget what it is. The important part is, the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations to keep them from annihilating the galaxy by using the mass effect too much. Shepard's big choice at the end was supposed to be a choice between destroying the Reapers and counting on the people of the galaxy to figure out a solution within the few hundred years they had before they hit peak mass effect, or else to let the Reapers go on reaping in order to preserve life in the galaxy, even if that means sacrificing every civilization you've actually seen or interacted with.

Personally, I think that's a step up from magical space cyborgs caused by green explosions.

I actually get the intent of the end of the ME trilogy, and can appreciate what they intended to do, but the implimentation fucked up due to the main author deciding to go lone gunman on everyone and write it all himself. Turns out, he's good on concepts, not so hot on detail. Go figure.

ME's ending results in Shepherd becoming a Nietzsche Ubermensch. You're literally making decisions that transcend normal morality. The surrounding cast talks about it occasionally too, but it's a theme that they don't really flesh out, but decide to run with at the end.

The story isn't just about the Reaper War, it's about Shepherd making impossible decision after impossible decision, and literally becoming something more than human, or even arguably something more than mortal.

While I think the romance story with Tali/Shepherd is probably the best written in the entire trilogy, if the entire writing team was on board with this Nietzsche plot, you would have seen Shepherd probably alienate from the rest of the crew throughout ME3, as his morality became more alien as he made decisions nobody else in the universe would, or possibly even could make.

Of course, the three levered end-o-tron 3000 was REALLY crappy writing, but the idea itself held potential. Reapers were, essentially, ubermensch entities of previous sentient species that were harvested. But being created in the same way over and over again, they became... stagnant. Shepherd was the first "ubermensch" who *wasn't* a reaper, who thought differently. I was hoping that he came up with a totally fucking new answer that was not along the morality spectrum that the Reapers provided. Something like using the Crucible to beam everyone in the Sol system that wasn't a Reaper to another galaxy to start over again without these assholes. A "I reject your fucking false choices and get off this goddamn merry-go-round" solution. After all, pretty much every single species in the galaxy had clustered around Earth for the final battle, and while a lot of people would be left behind, a lot would be present to be beamed out.

But, the writing was shit, and the idea of what was actually going on was lost in the bad writing and continuity errors.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Concept Art:

Inn

Cellar

Glanfathan Statue

Glanfathan Statuee

Area concept, surprisingly

[Avoraciopoctules]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9059

The specific list may change, but the biggest difference players will notice in Attributes (compared to A/D&D ability scores) is that all of their bonuses are uniformly applied instead of being keyed to specific types of weapons or attacks. E.g. one Attribute affects bonus damage (and healing) and one affects bonus accuracy -- regardless of the weapons or spells being used.

We would like your character concepts to be viable regardless of how you distribute your Attributes. Part of our solution for this is decoupling things like Attribute-based accuracy and damage bonuses from specific types of gear or class abilities. The focus of your character may change based on how you shift the points around, but we want to avoid setting up "must-have" and "must-dump" stats.

[K]

I play through naturally without spoilers or walkthroughs and just accept the ending I get as "the real/best/true ending."

So I end up as a dark god in almost every DnD game. This probably says something about my life-choices in general.

I think I ended up killing all the gods in Mask of the Betrayer and fucking off to my own universe.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I always thought that Mask of the Betrayer was fucking weird to make as a sequel to NWN2: OC for several reasons.

1.) The story that they tell in the game doesn't match the levels. It's a fucking cRPG so you kind of have to expect that, but if MotB took place from levels 12 to 22 instead of 18 to 30 it would've felt less dissonant. It's unavoidable, unfortunately, since NWN2 takes you from level 1 to 18-20 and MotB is a direct sequel.

2.) The party dynamic in that game feels way different than NWN2: OC. First of all, the NWN2 companions except for Shandra, Sand, and Ammon were either obnoxious or non-entities. The intent was to have a classic Scrappy Bunch of Misfits gelling together for a common goal but they felt too snippy and self-centered to ever have anything click. The vast majority of inter-character interactions felt snippy and hostile.

In a way that works for the game because it feels like MotB's interparty dynamics feels more 'mature' (as in, more adult and rational) than the OC. On the downside, there's a lot less companion-to-companion interaction in that game. Which is actually a pretty large pity, because with one exception your companions are a lot more agreeable and reasonable.

The only real weakness of NWN2's companion system is that they're too passive to evil. Your companions will only leave you if you're blatantly doing the whole Killfuck Soulshitter thing and you have to go pretty damn far. Which in a way is unavoidable because the cast is a lot more pared down compared to NWN: OC and you won't even notice it on a good/neutral/reasonable evil playthrough. But I'm sure it grated on K's playthrough.

3.) The tones of the games don't match, like, at all. OC was a classic 'lighthearted stumble-bumbling fantasy cliche adventure that gelled into something more serious in the endgame' which really didn't mix with MotB's 'heavy-handed and dire ruminations on dreams, family, morality, and defying fate'. Again, that choice may have been intentional to emphasize the maturation of the plot but it still feels weird as hell.

Also, while NWN2: OC already shit the bed with its craptacular (though not as craptacular as MotB's) ending it might have been asking too much for MotB to retcon more of the fail of it. MotB only partially retcons it by revealing that the less annoying characters survived while the more annoying ones

(the blatantly evil pyromaniac sorcerer dudette, that absentminded wannabe tinker gnome dude, that bland paladin dude, that smug ranger dude, the personality-less golem, that obnoxiously hyperactive tiefling rogue dudette)

didn't.


Now that I've partially calmed down, I would really like to analyze those two games. Except for the motherfucking, shit-sucking Chrono Cross of an ending of MotB's good/neutral playthrough I still contend that it's one of the best cRPGs out there. NWN2: OC is deeply, deeply flawed but there's still some gems in it. It's an entertaining trainwreck at any rate, like... oh... Final Fantasy Tactics or Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Another dev quote:

There are a few reasons why I don't think absolute XP/level parity across all potential companions is always a good thing.

In a class-based game, how you learn to use the classes (specifically, their abilities) often develops over the course of playing them. When characters who aren't in the party auto-gain XP and you level them in big jumps, the characters can often gain numerous abilities simultaneously. This can make it harder to "get" the significance of the individual abilities. It can also demand that the player make a series of choices in immediate succession without realizing how each of the individual choices may interact.

If all characters are perfectly XP-locked to each other, when it's time to level up one character, it's time to level up all of the characters. IMO, this can be bad for pacing and it's asking the player to make strategic decisions for all of their party members at once.

There is a strategic element to whom you take and whom you leave behind. I don't believe that unused party members should sit stagnant; I just think that there are pacing and learning advantages to staggering them somewhat. If a player uses the stronghold system to manage characters when they aren't in the party, they can have full XP parity if the player wants them to. If you choose to not use the stronghold at all, the folks at the stronghold will trail in XP somewhat, but not a margin of many levels.

[sake]

Another dev quote:

I read that and my first thought was, "yeah, those bastards are either going to have some horrible, unlikable character that spends 98 levels being a shitty useless waste but at lv99 gets the "Instantly Rape Every Bad Guy In a Thirty Mile Radius Forever" spell or they're totally going to pull a squaresoft and have a bit where you're going to be forced to use the underleveled characters in an unskipable fight."

[Avoraciopoctules]

At some point, you get a stronghold where you can dump tons of gold into upgrades. Some grant the privilege of increasing the amount of XP benched characters get.

To be fair, the situation is complicated by the fact that you can hire a theoretically unlimited number of new heroes from the adventurer guild.

[Whipstitch]

Eh, I wouldn't be too concerned about that kind of jrpg jackassery. The closest I think you could come to a "secretly" awesome character in the old IE games would be running a druid/fighter multi-class like Jaheira in the BG series--the XP table was aggressively terrible, but once the ball got rolling you quit being just a heal stick & Entangle dispenser and started running around with multiple attacks, ironskins, insect swarm, debuff neutralizers and a mess of elemental buddies.