Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2013

The following is based on developer commentary.

A collection of Formspring statements by Joshua Sawyer.

Posts

JESawyer responded to Formspring 2 Jan What's your favorite cartoon character? Wednesday the cat or Mystery Solving Teens as drawn by Kate Beaton. JESawyer responded to Asakiro 2 Jan In New Vegas, why were laser weapons semi automatic or automatic but never a sustained beam? We tried implementing continuous beam weapons and they were catastrophically buggy. There were only two "wacky" things we tried doing for weapons, neither of which seemed like they would be difficult to implement. Continuous beams were cut relatively early. Looping reloads (for weapons like the lever-action guns) turned out to be long-term problem. Early on, the system just manifested a few edge case bugs, so we kept squashing those bugs... but others would spring up. It was very odd, because it did not initially seem like a system that would be particularly problematic. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 2 Jan If armor determines how much damage you take. What dictates whether you hit/miss/dodge an attack in PE? Right now, Tim, Steve, and I are experimenting with with a set of defenses that cover the basic "did you get hit?" mechanics of all sorts of attacks, from melee swings to arrows to fireballs to mind control spells. Currently, characters have a defense against melee attacks that attackers try to overcome (like AC without the armor component -- but with shields). A "miss" against any defense translates to half minimum damage inflicted or half minimum duration on any sort of status effect. I.e. there aren't "full" misses, but mitigated effects. A hit is the standard damage/duration. A hit that is within the critical hit range does 150% max damage or duration. This system is already implemented and seems to be working pretty well, but we'll continue to experiment with it. JESawyer responded to LurkerOfTheSky 2 Jan If you had the opportunity to a historical RPG set in medieval/early modern Europe, would you preference be to include supernatural elements like Darklands, or leave them out? I like low-magic quasi-supernatural Europe in the vein of Darklands, Ars Magica, and even (arguably) Brotherhood of the Wolf. I like there to be a bit of magic oddity. Even in Ars Magica, it feels like there's still a lot that is "unknown". JESawyer responded to hedfone 3 Jan As a person who LOVES fallout 3 and new Vegas and has played them for hundreds of hours. Do you have any basic tips that would make playing fallout 1 and 2 much easier? Every attempt I've had at playing them has been like running into a brick wall.. :/ Fallout and Fallout 2 can be much harder games than F3 and NV, especially with certain character builds. If you're making a combat-oriented character, start off with Small Guns tagged. Also, you should have as high an AG as possible. AG is useful for VATS in F3/NV, but it is incredibly important for combat AP in F1/2. Don't drop your ST too low, both for carrying weight and for using certain weapons. A 6 should be sufficient for most of the pretty darn good weapons. JESawyer responded to ksaun 3 Jan Hi Josh! Which of the games you've worked on -- completed or not -- do you feel you learned the most from? How do you feel Project Eternity is benefiting from that experience? I think I've learned a lot from every project I've been on, but I guess F:NV was the most illuminating. It had the longest development cycle of any game I've shipped and, by far, sold the most units on the most platforms. I think that wider-than-usual net helped show how much people "got" or didn't get certain types of gameplay mechanics, narrative structures, etc. I also had more freedom to mess with the rules on F:NV than I did on any of the D&D games I contributed to, and seeing how people responded to the minor and major shifts between F3 and F:NV was very informative. I think the biggest thing I took away, more definitively than ever, is that how things actually work matters more than how people react to the idea of how they will work. I.e., there are really two levels of response to something in the game: the idea of what it is (often interpreted outside of the game) and the reality of what it is. The idea is often more upsetting or disconcerting to people than the reality. But the bottom line is that the reality actually has to be enjoyable in the context of the game, regardless of where the idea started or what the intent was. When we eliminated Big Guns and spread the weapons around to other skills, there was a lot of head-shaking. After the game came out, not many people complained about or or really even seemed to care. That isn't to say that NO ONE cared -- some people cared, and still care, a lot about it. But the end result didn't generate a lot of negativity and most people responded positively to it or just didn't care. On the other hand, the way the map was illustrated was logical and map-like but confused people because they thought it was literally at the same scale as the F3 map. In F3, the map border *is* the border of the world. In F:NV, the map border is the extreme outer extent that encapsulates the irregular border of the world. Essentially it was like forcing Colorado and Nevada to be fit into an identical square frame map that's 10" by 10". Nevada is larger than Colorado in reality, but it is always going to take up less space if pushed to the edges of a 10" by 10" map because Colorado has a rectilinear shape and Nevada doesn't. Long story short: it makes sense, but it confused a huge number of people who thought that we were wasting portions of the map. We addressed this in Honest Hearts by using an irregular border instead of a square one. And speaking of Honest Hearts, I also learned that between the free-wheeling nature of F:NV's content implementation and the strict, low-risk implementation of Honest Hearts content, OEI content usually needs to fall somewhere in-between. A quest that is completely cut-and-dry bog-standard will usually come across that way even if it takes place in a new setting. A quest that is a tangled skein of nightmare scripting will probably ship as a broken mess of half-fulfilled dreams. So when it comes to working with designers, it's good to start with a really solid, stable core of gameplay but leave time for (and encourage) more risky secondary elements after the core has been developed. Having content that's just "in" and works isn't enough -- both for designers and for people who are playing an Obsidian RPG. People enjoy weird and wacky stuff in quests; it just has to work properly. Our concepting, design, and review processes need to account for the basics but also ensure there's time for the cool and unusual stuff. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 3 Jan Can you tell us yet if enemies in Project Eternity will also have the dual stamina/health system, or will that be for PCs only? Enemies in CRPGs typically don't need "strategic resources", after all. How "symmetric" is the game's ruleset, in general? In general, the system will be pretty symmetrical. I think some of the most interesting fights are with classed/leveled enemies, so having a symmetrical system allows designers to build enemies like "regular" characters. JESawyer responded to DrHL 3 Jan Do you like any other webcomics besides HAV? I honestly don't find many webcomics funny. Hark, A Vagrant! is the only webcomic site I will go to regularly for updates. Kate works at her art (even the simple, quick sketches are often pulled out of larger series) and her characters have a lot of personality. The topics and sense of humor in HAV are a lot more appealing to me than most webcomics. I can honestly say I can't remember laughing out loud (LOLing, if you will) at any webcomic other than HAV, but I laugh out loud at many HAV strips. Even when HAV goes into SERIOUS, REAL LIFE mode, I still think it's good. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 4 Jan Would you describe your design philosophy as "psychologically manipulating players into accepting fail states instead of reloading, by shifting the consequences into the longer term"? No. That's really narrow for an overall design philosophy. When it comes to mechanics, I believe we should design systems that work together to produce challenging gameplay content and a variety of tools players can use to overcome those challenges. If challenges can be easily circumvented by using one skeleton key tactic (whether it's reloading, a singularly overpowering item/ability, or something else), then the gameplay will get boring quickly. I think gameplay is most enjoyable when there's a balance of frustration and triumph. Without frustration, triumph becomes cheap. Continuous frustration with minimal/infrequent triumph often feels like it isn't worth the effort. Every player has a different balance point for what they enjoy, but if the systems have easy "outs", it can make the challenges trivial. JESawyer responded to Rehvenge4 4 Jan In older games don't you think the type of system used,chaotic systems,breakable systems with a sense of humor in mechanical design(think Fallouts) were part of the charm?In a more coherent and restrictive system don't you think something is missed? Not really. Are you suggesting that we should design an incoherent system? I don't think the sense of humor in Fallout was in the mechanical design, but in the content supporting the mechanical design. E.g. the area design and art, characters, animations, sounds, text descriptions, etc. If you took a Fallout crit shotgun blast and removed the sound effects, hand-touched sprite "blown out torso" animation/effects, and the text description accompanying it, there really wouldn't be anything humorous about it. It would just be a hit that did a lot of damage. Late game Fallout 2 is where the limits of the system really started to get pushed. Extended fights with Enclave troopers were typically slugfests where you and the enemies traded single-digit damage until someone (usually you) scored an armor-bypassing critical for triple-digit damage and annihilated the target. If it weren't for the continuous satisfaction that comes with massive overkill body-melting plasma criticals (which is due to the content supporting it, not the mechanic itself), the combat would have been much less enjoyable. JESawyer responded to SerMcWorst 7 Jan Is there any chance we could see some prototype footage, or did you decide it's ultimately not worth it to show something so early after the reactions to the art update? It could help us understand the flow of combat and contextualize some design choices It's still pretty early. JESawyer responded to MillardK 8 Jan Will non-combat skills be restricted by class? I like to play warriors and characters good with diplomacy/speech/persuade skills. Few games let players do both at once and I was wondering if PE would be different. They won't be class-restricted, but some classes will have more of an advantage with certain skills. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 8 Jan What are some of the incentives to using a lighter armor type in PE? Is it just an encumbrance thing? Is will your movement speed be affected even if you have the strength to carry heavy armor? You will attack, cast spells, and perform most other actions (not including standard movement) more quickly. A character in the heaviest armor will likely have somewhere in the range of a 30% speed (again, not movement) penalty to his or her actions. In the time it takes an unarmored character to complete a given action 10 times, a character in the heaviest armor will have completed the same action 7 times (roughly). We are using this trade-off because it seems to pose a more interesting problem for players than a combat vs. non-combat trade (e.g. protection vs. carry weight or non-combat skill use) and it's not as mathematically straightforward as a damage avoidance vs. damage reduction model (i.e. dodging vs. absorbing hits). Characters that stay away from the front lines (e.g. traditional long-range wizards and archery-focused rangers) may tend to wear less armor because they are not subjected to as many attacks. Some front-line combatants may wear light armor with the strategy that dealing damage more quickly will make up for their relative lack of protection. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 8 Jan In a follow-up to a previous question you answered, how easy will it be to change out armor during combat in Project Eternity? Are you allowing it, disallowing it, or penalizing it in some way? The party can't access anything in the "top of pack" during combat, so it's impossible to switch anything other than equipped weapon sets. Outside of combat, you can switch any equipped item with anything in the "top of pack" freely (including something you've just found). At a camp or certain other locations, you can move items freely between equipment, pack, and stash. JESawyer responded to undecaf 9 Jan How are you considering handling in game economy with the "stash" system (which has unlimited space??) so that the player doesn't become a billionaire early on and that there is some actual value for currency and stuff to spend it on with a purpose. Sale prices have to reflect the fact that the player has unlimited inventory space. In most games, we have to balance around the hope/belief that most players aren't patient -- because really, nothing actually prevents the player from yanking everything out of a dungeon and marching it down to a shop other than their own impatience. That's not a great way to balance things because the gulf of value between the impatient and the patient is pretty large. JESawyer responded to atuckett 9 Jan In Project Eternity will you be able to adjust the camera like you can in wasteland 2? You will be able to zoom out and can pan, but not rotate, since the environments will be rendered out as 2D images. JESawyer responded to HiverZ 10 Jan Are you going to go with fixed amount of HP points or will players be able to raise the amount of HP in any way, by leveling or otherwise, during the game? Characters will gain HP throughout the game. JESawyer responded to KaeseEs 10 Jan Was the relatively early availability of an "ascension kit" (DRCA, brush gun/survivalist rifle, tons of herbs) via Zion by design? I tend to race to stone bones cave then take the rest of the game at a leisurely pace (cf. alpha pavonis vii in SC2) Not intentionally, no. I don't have any problem with players making meta-game plans to bee-line to a good piece of gear if they've already played through the content. Presumably you've already played it through without a guide the first time and you enjoyed it enough to play it again. JESawyer responded to jvdgoot 14 Jan When talking about designing combat system you make a distinction between strategy and tactics. What is the difference? The definitions are not used concretely, but strategies focus on planning or preparation and tactics focus on reactive elements "in the moment". A simplified way of looking at it might be to consider good tactics necessary to win battles, but good strategy is required to win wars. In a D&D campaign, how you build your character is strategic. You're making choices for the future based on some amount of speculation. A wizard selecting magic missile for his or her spellbook is not necessarily a bold choice because its applicability is broad. A ranger selecting abominations as his or her favored enemy either knows something really specific about the setting and campaign or is making a wild gamble. Similarly, gear selection and spell preparation is strategic -- how strategic depends on how limited the availability of options is in the field. If you can carry eight weapons at a time, per character, you don't need to be that careful. If it's like XCOM:EU, where most characters go into the field with one main weapon and one sidearm, it's a big deal. Sometimes, a decision made in battle can be tactical and strategic. For example, using a limited resource ability (e.g. a high level spell). The most tactically efficient thing to do may be to spend the limited resource ability, but if you think you have more difficult enemies coming up prior to regaining that resource, you may want to hold off. I like RPGs to have both tactical and strategic elements, which is more in line with the AD&D-based RPGs of the late 80s-early 2000s. I'm trying to ensure PE will have both layers for players to consider. JESawyer responded to suejak 14 Jan Hey Josh, you don't take things like this seriously, do you? http://nexus404.com/2010/11/05/the-top-six-reasons-fallout-3-is-better-than-fallout-new-vegas-after-playing-both-i-discover-six-reasons-that-fallout-new-vegas-just-cant-surpass-fallout-3-yet/ You seem like the type who'd say, "O Woe, he is a Consumer and I am but a Designer. If and he and the masses are displeased, I have failed." Please don't. Screw him. http://nexus404.com/2010/11/05/the-top-six-reasons-fallout-3-is-better-than-fallout-new-vegas-after-playing-both-i-discover-six-reasons-that-fallout-new-vegas-just-cant-surpass-fallout-3-yet/ I don't try to make everyone happy, but I do try to communicate what I/we are trying to do and listen to how people respond to that. A consumer can be upset for whatever reason he or she wants. If I think the reason is shared by enough people, I have to at least consider it may be valid. In some cases, we change things (especially if I don't think it's going to cause a negative response from anyone else). In other cases, I accept that they aren't going to like Thing X about the game and we move on. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 14 Jan Can you describe your vision for how loot will be gained by the player? Will it be mostly gained through combat, quests, or other forms? Quests will probably be the least frequent, with combat and environment making up the dominant methods. Most of our loot will be hand-placed with a small amount randomization. The amount of loot you will find will be more in line with the IE games than games focused more heavily on finding/sorting/selling items. JESawyer responded to Petrarch 14 Jan Quite a while ago you discussed with us how you professionally detach personal feelings for a project because at the end of the day, it's your job and you're a professional and you don't "own" the game. Do you still feel the same with Project Eternity? Yes. Project Eternity belongs to Obsidian and was backed by individual gamers based on what we said we were going to give them. It is definitely not "mine", but I am responsible for directing it. JESawyer responded to jvdgoot 15 Jan As someone who was not really good at the combat in IE games will I be able to put it on "easy" mode and still play the game for the story? We're designing the game for people who enjoy the challenge of combat, but different people have different capabilities. If you don't like combat at all, PE will probably not be enjoyable. We consider tactical combat to be a core component of the game. I would like to focus most of our difficulty increases around changing the staging of the encounter, primarily what enemy combatants are present and how they are positioned. At lower levels of difficulty, you will often have fewer enemies to deal with, which can make the challenges less exacting. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 17 Jan Is weapon reach going to be a consideration in Project Eternity? Most melee weapons will have a standard/uniform reach. Characters don't need to be right on top of each other to engage in melee, but they need to be fairly close. Some weapons, like pikes, have the advantage of being able to attack from fully behind another character. JESawyer responded to MVozda 17 Jan Hey Josh, I'm not sure if this was ever answered but I'm very curious; When you first started on Fallout NV, was Vegas the first & only location you wanted to base the game around or was there other locales tossed around before deciding on NV? Thanks! I wasn't part of the decision-making process for where the game was set. I'm not sure if the owners/Bethesda had any other ideas. JESawyer responded to uaciaut 17 Jan Would blunt damage dealing damage weapons have a weakness against light armor if they have an advantage over heavy type? Would enchanted weapons be able to bypass some damage-type weakness so as you should mix and match weapons but you can afford not to? The base damage of crushing weapons is lower than slashing weapons and has no inherent armor bypass (like piercing weapons), so they are less efficient against light and medium armor. Once armor hits a certain strength, the raw damage and armor negation values of slashing and piercing weapons can't make up for the high DT. Because crushing weapons have a higher minimum damage after DT is applied, they always maintain clear superiority in high DT situations. An enchanted weapon will typically reinforce the basic properties of the weapon, not work around them. One thing we're trying to avoid are mathematical situations in which all obstacles can be turned into nails if your hammer is big enough. E.g., a mighty enough sword can eventually ignore the shortcomings of slashing weapons. Because piercing weapons' DT negation scales with damage bonuses and because crushing weapons' minimum DT is a multiplier of base damage, this should not generally occur. However, the "bands" of applicability do grow as damage output rise. If everyone is doing 2x as much damage with their slashing, piercing, and crushing weapons, slashing weapons are dominant against higher DT than they are when they start out. Similarly, piercing weapons take over at a higher DT and hold that dominance for a larger band of DTs. Because there's no effective cap on DT, crushing weapons always have a place to shine assuming that some enemies will always have a DT that outstrips damage output. JESawyer responded to Colddog 18 Jan Doesn't the blast ability get less important once wiz characters begin to access "free" low-level damage-dealing spells? I presume it will have different advantages which low-level spells cannot offer. What would be possible implementations? Blast scales with the weapon damage of the implement the wizard uses to generate it, so it should remain useful, damage-wise, even when lower-level spells become a less precious resource. Blast's area will also likely be of a unique (somewhat small) size that not many spells will duplicate. JESawyer responded to Petrarch 18 Jan What is your support for unarmed combat shaping up like? The idea of playing an unarmed karate master in most RPGs seems really appealing but I usually end up disappointed because your fists don't have stats or the ability pool is low. Monks can use "normal" weapons but their default unequipped weapon state is different from other characters. I.e., their unarmed attacks have elevated stats that make them a viable (and attractive) alternative to using other weapons. PE monks aren't quasi-Asian, though they are unarmed fighters and tend to wear light or no armor. They aren't considered exotic in the Dyrwood and other than their unarmed fighting techniques, they do not use special weapons. Many of their special abilities are unlocked via mortification of the flesh, i.e. as they take incoming Stamina damage, they immediately convert a portion of it into a resource they can use to power things like stun attacks. Damage absorbed in this way does not influence Health and is a motivating factor for ability-oriented monk characters to wear lighter (or no) armor, though they can certainly be overpowered by heavily damaging attacks. JESawyer responded to DarkLordRahl 21 Jan Why do you feel that its bad game design to encourage someone to fight something for experience, but not to encourage skipping over something because facing it yeilds no benefit and wastes resources? Because there are other ways to accomplish the ostensible goals (quests) that are not systemically rewarded. We can either systemically reward every action the player performs -- which typically results in some form of grinding, e.g. DX:HR hacking, and becomes an XP mess -- or we can view those different actions as means to content-specific rewards (what do you get out of the specific interaction in a specific instance) and systemically reward completion of the quests (and objectives within quests). JESawyer responded to TrueWarriorPoet 22 Jan Recently in the forums it sounded like the animators had their hands tied due to design decisions 4 combat animations. I'm worried combat is gonna be so simplistic & tedious & feel like grinding & not fun. Can u explain ur vision 4 how combat should flow? They only way their hands are tied is logistically, i.e. they have a lot to do to support the breadth of what we want the characters to do in game. New actions have to be prioritized over variants of extant animations or we'll be sacrificing player functionality for aesthetic variation. I'm pretty confident we'll wind up with multiple standard attacks per weapon, but they still have to be prioritized behind new actions. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 23 Jan Isn't the new damage/armor system a "rock-paper-scissors" type thing? I thought you didn't like those. No, because only one tactic is demonstrably inferior. In rock-paper-scissors, all tactics but one are inferior. If you fight a fire giant in A/D&D, using fire is usually not a valid tactic. You don't have to use cold to beat one. You just can't use fire. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 23 Jan Can you expand a little further on what you meant in regards to armor type vs. damage type, please? It is a little difficult to understand what is wrong with the previous system without some details. Thanks! Hopefully this is a better description of the problems: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63...tion-damage-vs-armor-and-a-tileset/?p=1303123 JESawyer responded to roastedostrich 23 Jan You look very young and healthy for your age, tell us your secrets! Do you watch what you eat? What about workouts? Thanks, but I think it's mostly the dim lighting of the video. Up close, I look like someone in his late 30s. I don't eat meat (including fish), but otherwise I don't eat particularly well: a lot of candy, soda, and cheese. I'm getting over a sinus infection right now, but normally I bike to work three days a week, which works out to about 70 miles. Road season is starting up again, so I'll be doing longer rides when the days get longer. In the summer, I usually average 110 miles a week, but I'd like to bump that up closer to 150 this year. JESawyer responded to christopherran 24 Jan Hello Mr. Sawyer. I am a huge Fallout: New Vegas fan, I had a lot of fun playing through the game, I think you guys did a great job! I was wondering if there is some kind of "Behind the Scenes" type of thing for the game? maybe blogs, videos, books? Thanks! We recorded a bunch of interview videos for F:NV and I think all of them wound up in the Collector's Edition. Some of them may also be on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJttwoRP0s JESawyer responded to Mirokunite 24 Jan So the Norway cheese fire. Give us your thoughts? It is a tragedy. BTW, if you can find some gjetost (the defunct old name for brunost that is used in the US), it is excellent. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 24 Jan I've noticed you haven't really discussed Project Eternity's attributes (Strength, Dexterity, et al) in length. I'm beginning to wonder if they're going to be there at all. There will be attributes. I would rather design the rest of our system and subsequently determine what attributes make sense/what they should affect than design attributes first. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 24 Jan Hey, Sawyer! Neverwinter Nights 2 is for sale on GOG now. Are you guys still getting royalties from this game, or did that deal collapse with Atari? To be honest, I have no idea. Feargus is probably the best person to ask about that. JESawyer responded to AgeCaves 25 Jan Hello, Josh! Just a quick tiny baby question. For the HUD and Pip-Boy of Fallout: New Vegas, why did you guys choose the default colors amber, opposed to Fallout 3's Green/Blueish color? Was it to match the Mojave Wasteland color pallet? Yes, I think Joe Sanabria, our lead artist, picked the amber color to match the overall palette. JESawyer responded to jvempire 25 Jan How long was the development time of Fallout New Vegas (from the start of the project to release)? About 18 months. JESawyer responded to Richie9999 26 Jan Hey, something that I've wanted to know, what gun is the .357 magnum in FNV based on, the Single Action Army, or one of the many variants/knockoffs of it? Any specific one in particular? It's essentially a Colt SAA, but I think the artist, Mitch Ahlswede, used a few different guns for reference. JESawyer responded to Richie9999 29 Jan I have another Fallout: New Vegas weapon question for you, what gun, if any, is the Hunting revolver and Ranger Sequoia based on? They're based on the Magnum Research BFR with a little bit of the short-lived Bison Bull. JESawyer responded to MikeGolf 29 Jan Hey Josh can you help settle a little debate.In FNV was the Pyromaniac perk meant to be governed by the Explosives skill and not EW or is this a small oversight. It was meant to be governed by EW because that's where the Flamer was, skill-wise. Also, early in development we didn't have a way to display OR conditionals for perks in-engine. Pyromaniac could have benefited from an Explosives OR EW requirement. JESawyer responded to cacadookiepoop 30 Jan What's the hunting rifle in FNV based on? It's just based on Fallout 3's hunting rifle, which is pretty similar to old Winchester Model 70s. JESawyer responded to MLoone 31 Jan Do you get less questions now that people can't ask anonymously? Yep. JESawyer responded to Mirokunite 31 Jan Now that FO:NV soundtrack is on iTunes do you get royalties for your three songs? No. Those weren't done under any special contract. JESawyer responded to Petrarch 3 Feb At what point in the dev cycle do you generally realize what stuff isn't going to make it in, or that you need more time? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjH4s06XXQY JESawyer responded to alexmac142035 3 Feb In writing dialog, what is the order of priority in terms of information expressed to the player? (IE. Is plot stressed more than, say, characterization of the speaker?) Is there even a delineation at all or are all aspects ideally complementary? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYzhCYnDTAc JESawyer responded to Formspring 5 Feb What's your best trait? Bloody Mess. JESawyer responded to cacadookiepoop 6 Feb Why is the engraving on A Light Shining in Darkness in Greek and not the Deseret alphabet? Because John was originally authored in Greek and its soteriological concepts are wrapped in Hellenistic ideas (later expanded upon through Neoplatonic discourse). JESawyer responded to HiverZ 6 Feb Clarification needed. Will a combat focused character be able to master two or more different weapons to the same degree? In regards to the concept of switching weapons in combat to adjust for different circumstances and or enemies. Which i like, btw. Yes. Weapon specialization-oriented Talents will be thematically grouped (e.g. Knight Weapons) rather than specific weapons or damage types. JESawyer responded to Vieira1990 10 Feb Meaningful choices and consequences. Reactive characters. Particular roles not forced into the player's character (e.g. the chosen one, the last hope). Are you guys still intending to deliver these features? Yes. JESawyer responded to RoobixCoob 10 Feb Regarding the plasma defender from NV, was there any reason that it was so big? Like the handle jutting out of the hand big. I thought that the Plasma Defender and many other EWs should feel oversized/bulky because it fit the general tone set by F3's EWs. JESawyer responded to Richie9999 11 Feb Mr. Sawyer, what's the Silenced .22 pistol in Fallout: New Vegas based on, some sort of Ruger .22? Yeah, some sort of Ruger Mk. III variant. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 11 Feb We have not heard from tim cain in a while. What has he been up to PE wise? Tim has been working on some of the basic abilities for the "non-core" classes as well as spell lists. Most of the initial work we did was on "classics" that people might expect when coming to a class. If you play a barbarian, you're probably going to expect to have some sort of rage-y ability. If you play a wizard, you're probably going to expect something resembling a magic missile. There don't need to be a ton of these things and they don't need to mechanically ape D&D, but we want them to be familiar enough to help orient a player at the start of the game. We've started working on the more PE-world-specific class abilities and spells with other designers (e.g. Avellone and Fenstermaker) contributing ideas. JESawyer responded to deuxhero 11 Feb Who came up with the First Recon's "The last thing you never see" motto? It was either Eric Fenstermaker or Roger Chang, I think. JESawyer responded to Formspring 11 Feb What was the first concert you attended? I believe it was Pink Floyd at Camp Randall in Madison, WI in 1994. It was the Division Bell tour. I think their encore closed with Run Like Hell, though this was my favorite song of the evening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOc79piZa-A JESawyer responded to damiaen 11 Feb Does a fully automatic, high ROF, low itemhealth/CND, high DPS, late-game 100 Guns-skill Pancor Jackhammer-derived shotty sound like a good weapon concept, or is it ostensibly in too much competition with the Riot Shotgun/other high ROF weapons? It would have a lot of overlap with the Riot Shotgun and I think minor differences between the two (e.g. ammo capacity) would not be an issue frequently enough to fully differentiate them. The Pancor might make a good replacement for the Riot Shotgun. Of course, in a mod, there's nothing necessarily wrong with having two weapons fill the same role. It's just something I try to avoid in core game design because I usually think the resources could be better used elsewhere. JESawyer responded to TraderRager 12 Feb What would have been easier to balance- a .50 MG two-shot break action Elephant Rifle, or M2-esque .50 MG Machine Gun? Some sort of insanely huge break action .50 MG double rifle would probably be easier to balance. JESawyer responded to TheQwinnar 15 Feb Hey, Mr. Sawyer. Do you ever plan on attending PAX? I'm not sure. For whatever reason, it's never come up as something I needed to do for work. JESawyer responded to KevintheLemon 16 Feb (Sorry if this is a repost) Hey Josh, do you know anything about Black Isle studio supposedly reopening and claiming to make a game called V13? Other than what's already known by the public, I don't know anything more. JESawyer responded to cacadookiepoop 17 Feb Have you ever done any conlangs? Not well-developed ones, no. We made a pass at some for Honest Hearts, but they were really just lightly hybridized languages with limited grammar developed for them. JESawyer responded to LeoJSaravak 17 Feb Did you intend for Joshua Graham fit with the classical greek 'tragic hero' archetype? I was arguing with someone about Graham today and I realized how much his ending in HH is tied to you choosing whether he experiences anagnorisis & catharsis or not. Subconsciously, yes, but I didn't sit down and think "gonna make this dude a Greek tragic hero". I knew that Joshua had to be in an unresolved state, moved on from his life with the Legion but in a state of denial about his current motives. Joshua's struggle is about what burns inside him -- light that illuminates or fire that consumes. JESawyer responded to damiaen 18 Feb How often are you bothered by the kinds of opinions or questions you see or hear out of the gaming community, especially in regards to your projects (eg, FNV:HH) & things you feel strongly about in the industry (eg, the primacy of bigoted points of view)? Not really. The work I do is the most compelling medium I have to make any argument. If someone doesn't like it, I have to decide if I didn't make my argument well, if my position was flawed, or if the person is beyond convincing. There's always a way to respond based on those three conclusions. As far as the opinions of people or gamers at large, I'm not usually bothered much by them because we're all (people) mostly terrible on any given day. JESawyer responded to BenQNanke 18 Feb It would be a better industry if developers made games like you and your team do. Thanks for having the right mindset. PS I finally got NV for pc, and I'm playing your mod. It's a blast. Thanks. I'm glad you like it. JESawyer responded to LurkerOfTheSky 18 Feb How do you feel about games that go out of their way to fulfill male power fantasies (crush your enemies, hear the lamentation of their women etc.)? I think there's room for games to fulfill a lot of different fantasies. I "get" the Conan-style fantasy but it doesn't have a ton of appeal for me, personally. Ultimately, I'd rather expand options available to gamers rather than suggest someone else's fantasy is a bad one. A single game's style isn't going to appeal to everyone, so I just try to find something that I and the target players are all going to appreciate. JESawyer responded to RadekSmektala 19 Feb So, this just happened: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmb1s_ac_videogames#.USQA9pG9KK0 Any comment on that? Thanks! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmb1s_ac_videogames#.USQA9… I can't comment on it, unfortunately. JESawyer responded to lttibbles 27 Feb When was your first experience with a P&P rpg, and what did you play? I think it was in 1984 or 1985. I played Basic (red book) D&D with my friend Ryan. I don't remember what character I played, unfortunately. I mostly played Basic and Expert with Ryan for a long time. A few years later I started playing 1st Edition AD&D with some middle school dudes. JESawyer responded to gabordomjan9 28 Feb I had a debate about the Grimoier Slam. I've been told that "The idea that a wizard would use his most prized possession he/she/it is helpless without to slam big, ugly and green fuckers in the face is self-evidently ridiculous." Do you agree with this? If grimoires were fragile objects, sure. They are not fragile objects. Grimoires are all enchanted capacitors of soul energy that happen to be made in the shape of a large book. Every time a wizard casts a spell, he or she gathers and channels soul energy through the grimoire before releasing it. Even without the wizard using it, a grimoire is a magic item. If a wizard uses Grimoire Slam, he or she is not just swatting the target with the weight of a large book, but hitting the enemy with a magical capacitor. It happens faster than most spells are cast and, if it hits, can knock the enemy back. In a melee situation, that's why a wizard would use it. It's also an optional class-restricted Talent, not a core class Ability. If you don't like the flavor of Grimoire Slam, don't buy it. You'll have spells you can cast with more traditional magic effects that could JESawyer responded to Melnorme 3 Mar A while ago you said on SA that PE on Expert/Path of the Damned would be "as difficult as IWD2". Do you stand by that comparison? If so, did you mean IWD2 with HoF mode, or vanilla IWD2? Is there another game you would compare PE to, difficulty-wise? Icewind Dale 2 in Heart of Fury mode (though that could still vary in difficulty a lot depending on your party build). Yes, I'm still targeting that. With standard difficulty settings/modes, I'd like PE to be in the range of standard Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2. JESawyer responded to thesisko 3 Mar What is your favorite Pink Floyd album? I think it's either The Wall or The Final Cut. Pink Floyd - Is There Anybody Out There? When the Tigers Broke Free Pink Floyd Final Cut (11) - The Final Cut JESawyer responded to anek5 4 Mar Someone asked an interesting question about PE on the forum: "Are we going to see the classic power evolution where a mage starts out as relativly weak and then becomes powerfull were as the fighter goes the other way around?" Care to comment? I think I may have answered this in the past, but no, that isn't the intention. I'd like all of the classes to have good and reliable utility at the beginning of the game that increases at an even pace as the levels rise. JESawyer responded to adriandostanic 6 Mar I will be Honest Fallout 3 Was my first fallout game, and then later on i decided to play the originals and i always wondered why is the game SOOOO Hard? I mean i get old school games i like them as the second person but Fallout 1 was hard how come? I didn't work on the original Fallout or Fallout 2, but I enjoyed both of them a lot as a player. I think the original Fallout is just representative of the challenge level that RPGs were made at during that era. I grew up playing the original Bard's Tale, Ultima, Wizardry, and Phantasie games as well as the SSI "gold box" series, so that was the type of difficulty I was accustomed to (and still enjoy). JESawyer responded to jackhorrorshow 10 Mar So as I understand it, you went with "not-BG" as pitch for P:E, because it felt like a surer bet. Now seeing that T:ToN is somehow getting even more pledges than P:E do any of you guys feel a twinge of "dang, should have went full Torment"? That wasn't our reasoning, but no. I never doubted that a Torment successor KS would meet even a very high goal. JESawyer responded to Master33 10 Mar How do you feel about the first video from Tropes Vs Women? What do you think of the assertion that it's too "basic" and lacks critical insight? It's the first in a series, so I expected it to be pretty basic. What critical insight is necessary that isn't obvious? Allow for a larger representation of female characters to have some agency and power in their stories. Don't make all female characters in your games passive objects. If you are updating games in which female characters had no agency and were passive objects, consider a variety of modifications (if possible) to give those characters more agency. It seems like simple stuff to me, but if people don't agree there's a problem with the trend of these representations to begin with, it's hard to move a conversation forward. JESawyer responded to jvempire 12 Mar do we have free will? [3] I don't know and I don't care. JESawyer responded to Formspring 12 Mar Which magazine do you want to be on the cover of? High Times. JESawyer responded to DevastatinDave 15 Mar What would you do if Torment beats PE in money earned? Spin my beanie propeller and make an "AWOOOOOGA" noise. JESawyer responded to SacredPath82 15 Mar are your [censored] answers over the last few days a retort to [censored] questions, or are there any internal causes? 1. Whether I have free will or not has no impact on how I live my life, so I don't care if I do or not. 2. High Times and pot culture are hilarious to me and I laugh every time I see that magazine. Though I have never smoked marijuana in my life, I would want to be on the cover of High Times more than any other, preferably holding huge dank nugs. 3. What am I supposed to do if another game Kickstarter exceeds PE's funding? Cry? Ritually disembowel myself? JESawyer responded to Richie9999 16 Mar Are you planning on exporting your formspring responses and possibly posting them elsewhere? I plan to, yes. JESawyer responded to KevintheLemon 18 Mar What other website can we ask you questions and follow you? (That you currently use) http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/ JESawyer responded to Asakiro 22 Mar Why does the Temple of Trials exist? I don't think I can give a definitive answer on that. Feargus may be a better person for that question. JESawyer responded to thomaswalpole 26 Mar Hi Joshua, Recently I played through IW2 and Fallout NV. I noticed in these games that there were many options for creating lots of strange character combinations via perks or items. Will this continue in Project Eternity ? Yes, hopefully. If people want to play very traditional fantasy RPG characters, we have a lot options for that, but I think a lot of players want to make something that is unique or at least unusual. We will try to support that as much as possible. JESawyer responded to Formspring 27 Mar What's the oldest piece of clothing you still wear? I've lost so much weight in the last 15 years that I don't have anything all that old. The oldest is probably a duck shirt from Björk's Vespertine tour in 2003. JESawyer responded to KevintheLemon 29 Mar When exactly does Arcade say "It's a thing...a science thing. It hurts robots. Nevermind." It's sounds like he's referring to emp I just never heard him say it before. It's a response he gives to a player who chooses a low IN (I think) reply when talking to him about EMPs. I think it comes up when he's talking about ED-E. JESawyer responded to Denis517 5 Apr There are a lot of hints saying that Christine is Veronica's lost love. Is this true? It is a mystery. JESawyer responded to enverxis 26 Apr In the kickstarter comments section Feargus said that P:E will feature an action queue bar, is this true? and if so will we have the option to disable it, because I personally can't stand them. Feargus was speaking prematurely. Personally, I would like to avoid the need for an action queue. Older editions of A/D&D promoted rote casting sequences (especially of buffs) and I would like to avoid that in PE. That said, if some aspect of PE would best be served by some sort of queue or sequenced action (e.g. multi-waypoint movement), I wouldn't rule it out. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 26 Apr What's your opinion of NPC schedules? They're cool and we'd like to support them to some extent. We haven't tried it yet, though. JESawyer responded to someguyModder 30 Apr In your opinion, what are the most consistent failings of fan-created quest mods (for Fallout: New Vegas, in particular)? Based on your observations, do you have any recommendations for modders aiming to craft fresh content? This probably isn't what you're looking for, but the most consistent failing I see in fan-created content (and professionally-created content) is the creators' inability to maturely accept criticism. Nothing any of us makes will ever please everyone. In some cases, it may not please anyone. We all have to decide what audiences we are trying to reach and decide what we are willing to do -- or not do -- to make them happy. Too many creators get angry at critics and devote their energy to unproductive activities. In the long run, it doesn't make anyone's life better, even in the relatively inconsequential field of video game development and modification. JESawyer responded to Rehvenge4 2 May Let's say that the game is shaping great,the best Obsidian has ever made etc.but April 2014 is near and you still have a few nice additions that you don't have time to implement. Will you be comfortable to have the game delayed by a few months ? I wouldn't add new features at that point, but if the game needed more polish, I would definitely push for more time. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 4 May other than testing your game/battle mechanics after they're implemented in the game, how else do you test to see if the game mechanics are fun for PE? Do you play PnP versions of the game? We don't play tabletop versions of PE's mechanics. They're really not designed for tabletop use. Attack/defense resolution uses a 100 point base scale, which IME gives people a lot of headaches. Worse than that, a lot of bonuses and penalties are percentile modifiers. That really slows tabletop combat to a crawl. The best way we have to see if PE's mechanics are fun is to implement and use them in the game. JESawyer responded to enverxis 4 May Will the stash be sortable by item type, or will stuff like say crafting materials get a separate tab or resource screen ? I'm not sure yet what sorting options we'll have for the stash, but crafting materials will likely get a separate tab or screen entirely. JESawyer responded to enverxis 4 May How is two-weapon fighting being handled in P:E? Will it be like D&D where you sacrifice accuracy or will it be based on attack speed? Two-weapon fighting sacrifices both raw per-hit damage output (two-handed weapons excel at it) and the Deflection bonus provided by a shield, which is significant. Because PE's armor system uses a Damage Threshold (straight subtraction) system, low damage hits against a heavily armored target can be very inefficient. High Deflection is most important for characters who fight a number of melee opponents. Against a small number of targets in light or no armor, two-weapon fighting is extremely efficient. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 5 May Regarding what you said in the attached link: the situation you want to avoid could be seen as a feature, not a bug. Will the game have dodging animations? If so, those would also be taking up time the character could be using to perform other actions. http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/48135884446/how-would-you-gu… I could only be seen as a feature if you want to work against the main purpose of implementing disengagement attacks. If we have dodge animations, they would only play while the character is not occupied with other actions. JESawyer responded to kmelt93 5 May After reading this op-ed, I'm curious as to why the dialogue with Driver Nephi and Bert Gunnarsson regarding Mormonism was cut. Was it simply because Driver Nephi is openly hostile to the courier or some technical reason? http://kotaku.com/5988935/im-a-mormon-pop-culture-often-mocks-my-faith-but-fallout-treated-it-right Unfortunately, I don't have any idea and Travis Stout (who wrote Bert's dialogue) doesn't either. JESawyer responded to ashtonwhitney 5 May hi will you put thought into the game's currency like how you did with F:NV because that would be rad. I don't know what currency system(s) we will use, but I've given it some thought. I think currency systems can help cultures/the world feel more believable. JESawyer responded to PatrickSutton 5 May Was the ability to carry two weapons (handgun and rifle) of the same caliber inspired by the old cowboy practice or was it unintentional? It was intentional. We expanded the base ammo list quite a bit, but I wanted every type to be used by at least two weapons if possible. The lever-action rifle/revolver pairings made that easy. Most lever-action rifles and revolvers use rimmed cartridges, so it was easy to progress from .357 Magnum to .44 Magnum to .45-70 Gov't. We did the same thing with the rimless/rebated rim handgun cartridges and SMGs (9mm, 10mm, 12.7mm). JESawyer responded to cacadookiepoop 9 May Are you working on any conlangs and scripts for P:E? Yes, but I'm not focusing on it at the moment. JESawyer responded to cacadookiepoop 10 May Why's the etymology of Aedyr from deer, what's the significance? "Aedyr" literally means "many deer", but colloquially means "people of the deer". "Dyrwood" is Hylspeak for "deer wood". Prior to arriving in their current home, the Aedyrans (humans and elves) migrated south over many centuries. They were known as deer hunters and (later) farmers during that time. The current Aedyr Empire itself has very few deer, so when colonists landed in the new world and found abundant deer in the nearby forests, they considered it a good sign and named it the Dyrwood. JESawyer responded to zanmatt2g 13 May Do you think any Karma system should be removed in favor of a reputation system? I think karma, like A/D&D's alignment system, often has too many morally/ethically relativistic problems to be satisfying to a lot of players. Even though reputation systems can annoy some players in how they are triggered (i.e., how groups learn what you have done), they are implicitly relativistic. I think that's a big part of why they generally seem more "fair" and less judgmental from a design standpoint. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 15 May Would the completed prototype 2 make for a good demo of the game? No. It will still be lacking a number of major features. It's fun to play, but still very much an incomplete experience. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 16 May Can you tell us more about PE's rogue? I know it's a core class and you'd think it should be obvious, but over the years different games have had different concepts of what the rogue class is for. So, how will the rogue in PE play, minute-to-minute? They haven't changed a lot from when we initially talked about them during the Kickstarter campaign. Combat-wise, they're very good at moving around and through enemies and they have the greatest single-hit damage potential of any class. Out of combat, they can easily fall into traditional roles but can move to other skills without difficulty (which is pretty much the case with all of the classes). Their Escape ability has been modified to allow them to break Melee Engagement (instead of forcing a target to "lose" them) and Reversal was replaced with an active ability that gives them increased damage that is inversely proportional to the current health of the target (i.e., more damage to targets that are closer to 0 Stamina). As they advance, they gain access to passive abilities that increase their Crit range, make Sneak Attacks easier, and generally turn them into increasingly "spikey" damage combatants while also making them more difficult to engage. If you try to one-on-one them with hard-hitters, they will tend to get their asses kicked unless their damage spikes fortuitously, but pairing them with pretty much any melee ally should work well as long as you get them away when attention turns to them. Out of combat, they have inherent class bonuses to Stealth and Mechanics skills, so playing them "the traditional way" with scouting, lock-picking, and trap-finding is a natural fit. Classes like rangers also receive Stealth bonuses and even non-Stealth characters don't receive inherent penalties, so rogues don't need to be solo operators if you want to sneak around. However, they are the only class to have built in bonuses to both Stealth and Mechanics, so that level of proficiency (assuming the rogue focuses on it) can't be duplicated with a character of another class. JESawyer responded to ashleyparker26 17 May Are we likely to see Justin Cherry back at Obsidian at any point? Possibly as a stretch-goal for a distant Kickstarter? I really love his stuff. Justin is at Turtle Rock right now. I loved working with him and I was really disappointed when the last project we were on was cancelled. He brings a lot of beautiful elements to fantasy illustration, both in his personal and professional work. I'd love to work with him again someday. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 17 May Does teleportation exist in PE? and are there realms/planes what have you beyond the material and where the gods inhabit? We have discussed the possibility of short-range teleportation (i.e., within a hundred feet at most) but there is no long-range teleportation. People have a lot of different beliefs about the afterlife, but other than being able to observe souls passing through portals that appear to leave the physical world, no one is certain where souls go after they die -- or if the gods exist there. JESawyer responded to oldkingcoal 17 May Hi, Josh. What kind of diversity do you hope to bring to combat with the Barbarian? As a melee combatant, what distinguishes them from the Fighter or the Monk? If played traditionally, how do you expect them class to perform in and out of combat? We switched our initial concepts of the paladin and barbarian a bit. Barbarians are really great against groups of enemies because their passive Carnage ability gives them automatic, lower-damage attacks against enemies near their primary target. They also have abilities that give them short-duration bonuses when they down an enemy, so it's better for them to pound mobs into the dust than to try to stand their ground against a single, powerful foe. Barbarians focus on damage to groups (essentially melee AoE), monks convert incoming damage into status effects, and fighters are defenders/line-holders (kind of like 4E earthstrength wardens). None of those classes have the single-target damage potential of rogues or rangers, but they're all better at dealing with groups and they can all take hits better and for longer. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 19 May So, Project Eternity will have a unified inventory for all party members, as opposed to the Infinity Engine games' per-character inventory. That doesn't bother me so much, but what's your opinion of per-character inventories? You don't like them? In a game where one player controls all party members, I don't think it adds anything to the game to split gear up across 6 screens. There's no mental challenge to the process of organizing items across the screens. It's just busywork. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 6 Jun Reading the Torment's Reach ability for the monk made me wonder will there be different attack ranges for weapons? being able to attack from further away with say a spear than a dagger? Melee weapons have very coarse attack range granularity. Almost all melee weapons attack from the same (close) range. Weapons like pikes allow characters to attack from at least one full character away, allowing for "second rank" fighting. JESawyer responded to Bubonicus 6 Jun Thanks for answers, Josh. What kind of loot system are you planning for PE? Fixed loot(BG2)? Random loot(Diablo)? Semi-random or mix of both? It will be a mix of fixed loot and a bit of random loot. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 10 Jun So, in PE, if stamina regenerates outside of combat, then does it make sense to have traps that inflict stamina damage outside of combat? Maybe they should do health damage only. In general, what do you think is the purpose of traps outside of combat? It's generally best for damage to hit Stamina first since some characters (e.g. barbarians) have a different formula for converting Stamina damage into Health. Even though the Stamina damage will roll off rapidly (assuming the trap doesn't go off in combat), the Health damage won't. I think we place traps in levels for a few reasons. We want to make environments feel dangerous outside of the actual enemies in them. We want to encourage players to be cautious by providing a disincentive for running around. We want to emphasize that certain types of enemies are craftier or more underhanded/devious by placing traps in their areas. Finally, though I don't think this is a good reason on its own, I think we continue to use traps because they are part of RPG tradition. I like the motivations above as long as the mechanics aren't frustrating and the presence of traps makes the game more enjoyable. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 11 Jun Hey Josh, what are your thoughts about Ubisoft releasing a classic, turn-based, party-based sequel to the Might & Magic franchise, today, in 2013? Pretty crazy, huh? It's not surprising to me at all. JESawyer responded to Sensuki 11 Jun What level of difficulty are you designing the game for as a reference ? I assume that for convenience the production level of difficulty will be blocked in fairly easy and then designed up / down for others during post-production ? We're using Icewind Dale 2 and Baldur's Gate 2 for reference. The game is being designed for relatively high difficulty at first and later tuned down for lower levels of difficulty. It's easier to lower difficulty from a high bar than to raise it from a shallow baseline. JESawyer responded to lavacano201014 12 Jun Regarding Steam's new Trading Card thing: If I wanted to try and get trading cards made for Fallout: New Vegas, would I bug you at Obsidian (as the developers) or would I bug Bethesda (as the publisher)? You should probably talk to Bethesda. It's their IP. JESawyer responded to HiverZ 13 Jun In PE there are no medical items in the game that can heal instantly (thats great) - but i cant understand how such a setting can exist without some sort of medicine, - at all. Its just not possible. Wounds, cuts, broken bones, diseases? + No "doctors" ? There's medicine, but nothing that heals in seconds, minutes, or hours. It's all equivalent to early modern European technology at best. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 13 Jun Until now, all discussions of combat difficulty in PE have been in the context of dungeons, where there's a strategic context to consider. What about town battles, where a rest spot is always close by? In those battles, the party is always at full power. In those cases, combat will likely be tuned for a "full-bore" party. It's easier to make strategic adaptations if you fail a fight and can immediately change the party's loadout, but such fights will have a heavier emphasis on efficiency and tactical precision. JESawyer responded to ashleyparker26 13 Jun A while back it was revealed that Obsidian nearly did a World of Darkness game. I realise you probably can't talk about that, I was wondering what you personally would think about doing a horror RPG? How would you do a horror RPG if you could make one? I generally don't think of WoD games as "horror", personally. That might seem odd considering they're dominantly about vampires and werewolves and mages, but practically speaking, they're often very political games. At their best they are about personal horror and humanity, but I think that's a different feeling from the dread of a "normal" among the supernatural. I think Ravenloft captures that feeling much more. Each Darklord's domain has its own rules and the setting overall is designed for capricious catapulting of characters out of their comfort zone -- which is interesting since so much of A/D&D has traditionally been about escalating the players' feeling of domination over challenges. I also like that Ravenloft keeps the Dark Powers a mystery. WoD doesn't leave much to the imagination. Grasping at the unknown, having a feeling of helplessness because you're always on unsure footing, that invokes anxiety and dread very well. WoD also romanticizes being a vampire/werewolf/mage. Many vampires are beautiful and powerful, so it plays to the fantasy of transcending human boundaries while trying to emphasize increasing alienation from humanity. Ravenloft's Darklords are powerful, but they're not romanticized much. They're eternally tormented by a drive to keep repeating the same futile efforts over and over. I think a good Ravenloft game (CRPG or tabletop) wouldn't emphasize the traditional power growth of the PCs, but would probably start the PCs as reasonably competent and wear them down psychologically over the course of their campaigns (even if they're also gaining power in the traditional sense). You have to make the character growth really interesting because the thematically-appropriate endgame is ultimately doomed. At its best, Ravenloft is about people repeating the same tragic mistakes over and over. At worse, everyone goes insane/dies, which is also similar to Call of Cthulhu. Traditional CoC tabletop games have always felt a bit odd to me. I like Chaosium's systems well enough, but the classic Lovecraft/Derleth-style Cthulhu stories are often about solitary hapless individuals or a motley crew of oddballs coming together to (almost invariably) go insane/die. In those olde tyme settings, there's no real information network about the Mythos. Everyone is essentially ignorant and stumbling around until they run into Quachil Uttaus and get turned into dust. It makes for good stories, which is great if your group is heavily emphasizing storytelling. In a computer environment, I think an adventure game would make more sense than an RPG adaptation. However! I have always loved Delta Green for its more contemporary (now very 90s-flavored) view of CoC. It provides a great framework for an organization that has some understanding of the Mythos and the human agents (like Karotechia/Majestic-12) goofing around with it. Classic CoC can reasonably have parties like a detective, professor, prostitute, and baker who all wind up together as they are kidnapped by Servants of Glaaki. Again, that's cool in that context, but it often wouldn't work for a long-term campaign. DG is an organization that characters can cycle in and out of and rally around. You can even have strategic and tactical gameplay in DG because DG has to be ready to fight Mythos critters and (more typically) their human agents. I'd love to see a DG CRPG that emphasizes personal horror and character development in the face of Mythos horrors while having a solid dose of tactical combat and strategic resource management. I think that would be awesome. JESawyer responded to applesaucer5 19 Jun Are wild orlans' hairstyles cultural or is that just how it grows? That's just how it grows naturally on them. Similarly, the elven ethnic group commonly found around the Dyrwood can't grow facial hair, but the ethnicity from the southern polar region has no trouble doing so. JESawyer responded to ashleyparker26 19 Jun Are the elves of PE going to be throwing anything surprising our way, like a very alien culture or visual aesthetic? They seem to be that most vanilla of the PE races so far, including humans. The main elven ethnicity is designed to be very traditional, with the "pale elves" (Glamfellen) from the polar region having a more unusual appearance and a very different culture. JESawyer responded to Formspring 20 Jun Have you ever cried during a film? If so, which one? (I cried watching The Lion King :'( ) Yes. Black Dynamite. JESawyer responded to lysting 20 Jun Who was responsible for the Shaengarne content in Icewind Dale II? I enjoyed the challenges. I think it was John Deiley, but it may have been Damien Foletto. JESawyer responded to Rehvenge4 21 Jun Are there any thoughts to have subclasses like in BG2, or it isn't needed and would complicate matters too much? No subclasses. 11 classes with more than 10 levels each are a lot of work, especially compared to the relative simplicity of many 2nd Edition AD&D classes in the early IE games. We'd rather use Talents as a way for players to mechanically differentiate their characters within a class. JESawyer responded to Sensuki 21 Jun Are the relationships between the Emperor of the Dyrwood and the Elven Concubine arranged/political or lustful ? It's the human Aedyr emperor (technically the ferscönyng/first king) and the elven Kulkin queen (mecwyn, short for héamecwyn/illustrious queen). It's entirely political, but as with many political unions, that doesn't preclude affection, attraction, or anything that follows. Both the ferscönyng and mecwyn have same-race spouses and offspring; their "union" represents the ongoing alliance between the nations. Haemnegs in ordinary Aedyran society are "supposed" to be for purely practical/political/financial reasons as well but they are often driven by emotions and desire. Haemnegs cannot be performed unless both parties are already married. If someone who is in a haemneg becomes a widow or widower, they are often pressured to re-marry (a "real" marriage) unless they are past typical parenting ages. JESawyer responded to Jacryl 21 Jun Im constantly surprised by how well developed PE's lore, history and mythology is already. Have you worked out all of the stuff from scratch since the project started or does it go back further than the actual kickstarter? I'm glad you like it. None of it is earlier than the Kickstarter campaign. JESawyer responded to chmurgulops 24 Jun On the new world map revealed at Rezzed, is the area marked Vailian Republics the republics proper, or is it just their colony in the Glanfathan region? And do all the major areas of the map appear in the game? The Vailian Republics were originally colonies of the now-defunct Grand Empire of Vailia, just as Dyrwood and Readceras were once colonies of the Aedyr Empire. When the Grand Empire of Vailia (now called Old Vailia) started to collapse, the Vailian colonies conspired to establish financial and military resources that were separate from the empire's. When it was impossible for the Grand Empire to do anything about it, the colonies declared their independence. Though there were limited loyalist uprisings within the republics, there was nothing widespread and there was no formal military campaign from the empire against them. The map doesn't really focus on the playable areas of the game, which will be in the Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath. JESawyer responded to Vereski 24 Jun What kind of government does the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood have? Are they a monarchy, republic or something else, because it was mentioned that they weren't a duchy anymore. It's an elective monarchy. The ruler of the area was a gréf of the Aedyr Empire appointed by the fercönyng (emperor). During the rebellion, the gréf followed the example of the Vailian Republics and declared himself the duc of the "free" palatinate. After his death during the closing of the revolution, the remaining erls of the Dyrwood elected his son to be the next duc. Not all ducs of the Dyrwood have been from the Hadret family (and not all have been male), but they are all elected by the seven erls. The erls themselves hold hereditary positions. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 24 Jun Can you describe the main societies in the Project Eternity setting, socio-politically? Are they feudal? Absolute monarchies? Etc. What do the commonfolk do for a living? Is there civic awareness and broad nationalism, or are most people tribal/clannish? The Aedyr Empire is a hereditary monarchy. The Dyrwood is an elective monarchy. Readceras was a theocratic dictatorship and is now an ecclesiastic dictatorship. The Vailian Republics are a confederation of sovereign republics with ducs who are elected by powerful (usually wealthy) city councils called the consuagli asegia ("councils of the siege"). Eír Glanfath is a confederation of tribes, each run by an anamfath ("soul prince") and advised by a council of raoithe ("wise ones"). Most common folk live in rural areas and survive through subsistence agriculture and related activities (e.g. wool production). Dyrwoodans have a strong sense of nationalism due to the revolution but highly value personal independence. Glanfathans have an extremely strong sense of community between their tribes and think of the entire forest of Eír Glanfath as being their responsibility to protect. JESawyer responded to Formspring 25 Jun Do you prefer to trust your intuition or rely on logic when making important decisions? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54BSw7HXqU JESawyer responded to Melnorme 27 Jun A friend asks about the recently leaked screenshots with PE characters: "Those weapons on characters backs, they're actual representatives of the quick slot/secondary weapon your character have?" We would like to represent the characters weapon sets on the character even when they aren't being wielded. In those shots, the weapons are attached to the character models for testing purposes. We still need to do more experiments to see if it works with all weapon combinations. We also need to make sure that if we have cloaks (and we very much would like to) that we can minimize interference between cloaks and the weapons. JESawyer responded to tysixtus 28 Jun I've always felt that that Ranger classes get no love in a lot of CRPGS. They always feel like a cross between fighters and rogues, with none of the advantages of each. What's the PE design philosophy for Rangers? How will they "work"? Thanks! Rangers have the second highest single-target damage output capability (behind rogues) but have the advantage of range. While many rogue abilities allow the use of ranged attacks, the rogue needs to be relatively close to the target to use them. Rangers do not have this restriction. Rangers also all have animal companions. They are an integral part of the class and animal companions gain additional abilities as the ranger advances. Because rangers and their animal companions are soul-bonded, they share a common pool of Stamina and Health. Mechanically, this means that rangers cannot use their animal companion as a "meat shield", but they can gain good synergistic benefits from working together. JESawyer responded to Sensuki 28 Jun have you seen Dead Can Dance live ? Unfortunately, I have not. Toward the Within is one of my favorite albums. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt1XL8WZFaY JESawyer responded to Sensuki 28 Jun With regard to the rendered 3D character models, are you using two sets of assets for those as well? (one to go with the low res enviro assets and a higher poly count one for the high res assets) or does the default model scale all the way up? No, we just use one set of assets in-game for both the world avatars and what you see on the inventory screen (the "paper doll"). JESawyer responded to AN4RCHID 30 Jun You've mentioned that fighters in Project Eternity auto-regenerate stamina. Is this a limited active ability, or a passive/modal ability? It's a passive Ability. They also have a limited-use active Ability called Surge that restores a large chunk of Stamina. JESawyer responded to Inertiax 2 Jul Since there are no half races are interracial children born to the mother's race? like in TES. Sexual pairings by different races (in the PE sense, e.g. elves and humans, orlans and elves) never result in conception. JESawyer responded to Chauken 2 Jul You have said that barbarians have a different formula for converting Stamina damage into Health damage. Will they take more or less health damage? They take significantly less Health damage. We'll be tweaking the exact ratio as time goes on, but it's a lot less than other classes. JESawyer responded to chmurgulops 2 Jul What's the deal with dwarves in the Dyrwood? Were the dwarves at Durgan's Battery immigrants from Aedyr/Vailia or are there native dwarves in the area? The dwarves at Durgan's Battery (and several of the other ruined places around White March) were colonists from the Grand Empire of Vailia but were not founding colonies *for* the empire. Dwarves have a cultural predilection (some go so far as to say it's an instinct) to explore. They've actually been some of the earliest colonists in many parts of their world, though their colonies don't have a particularly good rate of survival. JESawyer responded to LastRound 2 Jul So, in Project: Eternity, the Vailian Republics seem to be rather morally grey, what with the slave trade and impressment. But does the Aedyr Empire and its former colony, Dyrwood, have flaws as well? They seem pretty utopian from all the info so far. The Aedyr Empire continues to allow slavery in most areas, practices serfdom, and believes in/enforces a divine right monarchy (through Woedica). They're also pretty closed-minded about animancy, ciphers, and a lot of the new breakthroughs in understanding mortal souls that have been discovered in the Dyrwood and Vailian Republics. Some Aedyre nobles also believe that they have a divine right to portions/all of Eír Glanfath. The Dyrwood allowed slavery (at least slave purchasing) until relatively recently and, despite currently having a treaty with the Glanfathans, did fight two wars with them previously over destruction/theft of Engwythan artifacts that the Glanfathans swore to protect. Though the palatinate was taking a lot of intrusive actions on behalf of the empire and arguably many of the people involved didn't want to participate (one of the major causes of rebellion), plenty of Dyrwoodans had no problem with it and, even generations later, still have racist attitudes towards Glanfathans (especially orlan Glanfathans). Dyrwoodans also applaud vigilantism and rebellion as a culture, often to their detriment. And though slavery is no longer legal in the Dyrwood, many Glanfathan orlans and a few elves still work/serve in a state that is little better than slavery. Because Dyrwoodans sneer at appeals to authority, locals who dislike the state of affairs often feel that they have to take care of it themselves or do nothing at all (usually the latter). JESawyer responded to Sensuki 2 Jul Regarding character advancement, how close is this to what you're using at the moment? http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63980-how-much-stronger-should-you-become-when-levelling-up/page-3#entry1346203 It's in the ballpark. I think we'll wind up tweaking the specific formulae over time. JESawyer responded to seasparrow 2 Jul Fragmentation grenades in New Vegas seem balanced differently than in Fallout 3. It seemed like they did less damage (skill dependent?) and also the physics engine had been changed so bodies don't fly through the air as much. Why did you choose this? The frag grenade in F:NV does more damage than the grenades in F3. I increased their damage because I introduced dynamite as a common low-level explosive and I wanted frag grenades to be less common and more powerful. I'm not sure if I adjusted their physics impulse. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 2 Jul I have a friend who is concerned that all you do is make remarks about how the Infinity Engine games were flawed, and that you don't seem to even like them. Can what describe what you liked about the IE games and how they will inspire PE, to reassure him? Most of what I dislike in the IE games has to do with specific elements of content or rules, not the games overall. This probably won't be surprising to anyone, but I even think my three favorite RPGs of all time (Fallout, Darklands, Pool of Radiance) have a ton of problems and I would want to significantly revise aspects of their mechanics or interface if I were handling a game made in their respective spirits. What I like about the IE games (not content-specific): * Allow for a lot of large, beautiful areas that promote and reward exploration. There's plenty of 3D art that I like, but I love using 2D art when we can because we can make some amazing environments. Laying those areas out and thinking about how the player will move through the environment to uncover rooms, encounters, etc. is a lot of fun as a designer. As a player, it's always fun. The feeling is not the same in first-person or close first-person game, and it's also not quite the same in 3D. We didn't always use this well (e.g. some areas in IWD and HoW were very linear) and I think those areas suffered because of it. * Responsiveness. I've always felt that the IE was very responsive to player input and AI state changes. Selection, movement, and execution of commands were all very "crisp" in the IE games, probably owing to its roots as Battleground Infinity (an RTS). Other than pathfinding, controlling characters felt good in the IE (IMO, anyway) -- better than it does in a lot of other RPGs. * Tactical combat. I disliked some of the specific rules or rule implementations, but I always enjoyed the tactical combat in the BG and IWD games. I loved designing it and I loved playing it. In particular, "symmetrical" battles with parties or other class/level characters were a lot of fun. I like the more scripted feeling of those fights even if I didn't like the rock/paper/scissors nature of some of the hard counters. I enjoy turn-based combat a lot, but I had already been introduced to RTwP 6 years before BG, so I also enjoyed/had no problem with BG's fundamental style of RPG combat. * General party control. You can access and arrange (almost) everything about your characters, shift them around relative to each other, use formations (though I like ToEE's better), advance and equip everyone individually, etc. Even when I didn't always like all of the companions' personalities, I liked that they *had* personalities and would interact with you/each other. And in the IWD games, we liked that we could make all of our own characters. * The huge variety of characters/parties you could make. Overall, just lots of options that created great variability in strategic and tactical options -- and different role-playing opportunities. For content-specific things: * I loved the scope and variety of areas in all of the IE games, but especially BG1 and BG2. As a former BIS guy, I'm always going to prefer the *style* of areas we developed for IWD (and, just before my time, for PST), but the BG games had a ton of huge areas to explore and an enormous amount of content. I still think BG2's early-game content could have been paced better. Even though BG had a lot of dead space, I still loved exploring the Sword Coast. * The tactical combat in BG2, IWD, and IWD2. My main complaint with BG2 combat is the hard-counter wizard fights. I don't think hard-counters belong in a game where you can easily, unintentionally, build a party that lacks the hard-counter. I also don't think save or die effects belong in a game with save/reload, but that's a larger issue with 2nd and some elements of 3rd Edition A/D&D. Notably, it's mostly absent from 4E and I think that aspect of the game is better for it. * How PST handled dialogue from the perspective of making it more than literally just saying words to another character. PST's dialogue allowed you to do much more in conversations and helped the player feel like they were *doing* things. Of course, PST's level of player agency in the story and with companions is fantastic. * The overall volume and varied responses/plotlines of companions in BG2 and PST. * The music of all of the games. They were all great. * The style of interfaces. They' were weighty and solid and the sound effects that accompanied them made them feel even weightier. Do I prefer the "across the bottom" UIs of IWD2 and PST to the wrap-arounds of BG and BG2? Yep. There you go. I think that covers most of it. I worked on four of the IE titles (IWD, HoW, TotL, IWD2). I hope people understand that I didn't come out of that experience thinking that either the engine or games were anything close to flawless. I watched dozens and eventually hundreds of designers and players interact with these games for years. When I'm critical of them, it's because I think they can be even better, not because I don't think they were good in the first place. JESawyer responded to Donnerman 8 Jul Why no Shifters in NWN2? It was one of the most interesting (and maybe confusing) classes in the game. Shifters/Masters of Many Forms had a perfunctory design in NWN2, but by the time they were supposed to be implemented, their impact had not been properly accounted for across the departments, so I cut them. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 8 Jul Can you tell us more about PE's combat skills? Will they be auxiliary like NWN's Tumble or Discipline? Minor bonuses like AD&D's proficiencies? Will they determine your combat performance entirely, like Fallout's weapon skills? Something in between? PE's skills grant auxiliary combat bonuses. I'm designing them to have a minor but not insignificant effect on how individual battles and series of battles unfold. Combat capability is dominantly determined by your class (and class abilities), attributes, talents, and gear. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 9 Jul Do you have a set target in mind for combat speed? I don't mean animation speed, but the speed in which high level events occur. The advantage of turn-based combat is that "events per time period" is predictable, while in real-time it can vary wildly. Yeah, we're trying to target the mid-levels of the BG and IWD games for most full-party combat. It can sometimes get frantic, but with pause, auto-pause, and slow mode, I think it will feel good. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 11 Jul Backspace - your game? No, I never worked on it. JESawyer responded to andreykvasha5 11 Jul Not sure if you were asked this already or not, but in FNV, why were the .32 rounds and the Smith and Wesson .32 Pistol in FO3 but were removed in FNV and why was the Hunting Rifle re-chambered for the .308? It was never really clear (to me, anyway) what real-world caliber .32 was supposed to represent. It was used in both a revolver and a bolt-action rifle, which generally aren't things that use the same type of case (revolvers use rimmed cases, bolt-actions usually use rimless -- though there are exceptions). With F:NV, I mostly tried to stick to calibers (especially early on) that non-gun folk might be familiar with: .22 LR, .357 Magnum, .308, .50 MG, etc. People often use "22" to indicate relative weakness and "50 cal" to indicate high power. .308 Winchester is a common hunting round. .357 Magnum is understood as powerful -- even if .44 Magnum is understood as even more powerful. While that doesn't necessarily help someone who knows *nothing* about guns, my hope was that it would make things a little more intuitive for someone who is casually familiar with firearms in popular culture. JESawyer responded to johnwbh 15 Jul I recently read that there was originally an option to complete the House questline without destroying the brotherhood but it was removed, was that an oversight or deliberate creative choice? IIRC, it was a specific creative choice that John Gonzalez and I discussed. Eliminating the BoS made sense for House and we believed it would make supporting House more difficult for a lot of players. I don't know how widespread this reaction is, but I've seen many players state that this was the point in the game where they decided to flip from House to an independent/wild card ending. JESawyer responded to Formspring 15 Jul Do you play video games? If so, which ones? VIDEO GAMES??? JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 23 Jul The main issue I have with the attribute system in P:E (I admit we don't know much about it) is that it limits a player's ability to "role-play" a certain type of character (i.e the dumb brute). Any plans on expanding RP opportunities outside of LARPing It doesn't at all -- conceptually or the specific example you gave. You can very easily make a dumb brute ***hter character in PE and role-play him or her as such. You can also make a brilliant weakling ***hter character and role-play him or her as such. The difference between doing this in PE and, for example, D&D, is that in PE this is a fully viable character concept who emphasizes different elements in combat. I have to say I think it's an odd complaint considering that to even arguably have ability score-based role-playing opportunities against type with A/D&D, you are required to build a character that is bad at his or her class. It's better in later editions of D&D because they put more effort into providing some universal values for ability scores, but there are still fundamentally horrible builds. A decent number of feats allow for viable Int-based ***hters (for example), but a Cha-based ***hter is flat-out bad at being a ***hter. You can find ways to work around it, but they're almost all splat book-based prestige classes and feats that try to put a band-aid over the fundamental problem, which is an imbalance of class-specific and universal benefits provided by the ability score array. JESawyer responded to chmurgulops 23 Jul Separate from the actual mechanics of the PE attribute system, will you make sure that the advantages of the system are communicated in the final game and dressed up in enough "fluff" justification? IE don't make the messaging mistakes of D&D 4th ed. Yes. It's always been hard for me to determine what in A/D&D is intentional obfuscation vs. unintentional oversight. I am a firm believer that players should be able to easily deduce the intended, practical effects of a design through simple observation. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 23 Jul Project Eternity suggestion: Perhaps recruiting in the the Adventurer's Hall should cost money when permadeath is enabled, to prevent players from forcing their way through dungeons by attrition with endless armies of minions. Characters from the Adventurers Hall will probably always cost money to get (they have no "upkeep" costs). JESawyer responded to Melnorme 23 Jul In Project Eternity, what happens to a character that runs out of health, when permadeath is disabled? I know he's supposed to be "wounded" in some manner, but what does that mean? Does he continue walking around with one health point that can't be lost? If permadeath is disabled, a character who hits 0 Health becomes Maimed. They immediately fall unconscious and can't get back up until the end of combat. When combat ends, they stand up with 1 Health and will regain all of their Stamina as normal. Until they next rest, they suffer very bad penalties to their accuracy and all defenses. If they get hit again and are reduced to 0 Health, they will be immediately knocked unconscious again. Maimed characters can walk around like normal and can participate in combat, but they are weak and vulnerable combatants who are likely to drop in a single hit. JESawyer responded to ashleyparker26 27 Jul In your interview you stated PE was very "conservative". I was wondering if you could clarify that. I know PE will have things like elves and dwarfs to appeal to the IE fans, but are you going to stick to a classic feel when making the rest of the game? I said that it was relatively conservative. I was mostly referring to the setting itself and the inclusion of common FRPG elements like elves, dwarves, fighters, wizards, swords, plate armor, etc. However, that also applies to the feeling of how the game plays, how you work through quests (e.g., there are no quest arrows/markers), and so on. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 27 Jul How do you respond to this: "A few playtesters built a party that couldn't survive BG2 13 years ago? Everything was wrong with that game. People more or less universally detest 4th Edition? Well, I don't care about people's opinions when they're wrong." KickStarter - JOSH SAWYER WANTS TO END FUN [Obsidian's Proje… (defunct Kickstarter link) That's a lot of different stuff to respond to. The main thing I would say is that PE's Attribute system isn't based off of 4E. A lot of stuff in PE is not based off of 4E because I don't think it would work well for the game. As an example, PE fighters are WAY lower-maintenance than 4E fighters (though a little higher than they are in 3E and certainly more than they are in 2nd Ed.). PE wizards are much closer to 3.5 sorcerer/wizards than they are to 4E wizards (though their power curve doesn't match 3.5's). I *generally* like the mechanics of 4E (e.g. the unified defense system), but I think the classes lost a lot of their unique feel between 3E/3.5 and 4E and it still has a lot of flaws that are shared by other RPGs and editions of A/D&D. I played 4E for about 2.5 years and I'm still playing 3.5 (and DMing a Pathfinder game). None of the rules in any edition of A/D&D are perfect and I'm not using a specific edition as a "goal". I want to use A/D&D-like mechanics when I can because I believe that's the sort of experience that our backers are going to enjoy. No blend of rules is going to make everyone happy, but I do try to keep this idea in mind: a player saying, "I want to make this type of character and play through the game with it." I know that's not important to all players, but I do think it's important to many of them -- and it is important to me. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 29 Jul When it comes to P:E and difficulty, will you make sure that there's a difficulty setting that you, yourself, find interesting enough to play through because it's tactically challenging and not just because it's an Obsidian game? Don't listen to the nubs. Yes. That's how a lot of the IWD/HoW/TotL/IWD2 encounters were balanced. Kihan (Pak) and I would compare difficulty notes and I would balance my encounters around that. They usually wound up too hard for the average tester, so we dialed them down a bit, but the higher-end/later ***hts (e.g. Burial Isle) tended to err on the side of increased difficulty. JESawyer responded to nzmccorm 29 Jul What's more important: a system being intuitive, or a system being balanced? Ideally, both, but I prioritize balance between a player's options -- whatever they may be. Intuition varies a lot from person to person, especially when it comes to RPG mechanics. If you've played enough RPGs, you find commonality between systems, but also a huge amount of divergence. Pendragon is not like D&D, GURPS is not like FUDGE, and Burning Wheel is not like Cyberpunk. Someone coming to one of these systems from another may find the rules unintuitive simply based off of their past RPG experiences rather than from any sense of verisimilitude. If a mechanic sacrifices intuitiveness for balance, even if the player makes a choice from the basis of an incorrect assumption, their "wrong" choice may very well wind up being a viable one. If a mechanic sacrifices balance for intuitiveness, it may point the player toward the viable solutions, but it's implicit in the sacrifice that we're knowingly including sub-par (or worse, trash) options in the game's content. I don't think the player gains much from the inclusion of options that are designed to be bad. It means the designer is including things that take resources to make and display in the game, but really aren't ever made to be taken. In the long run (and most RPGs have a fairly long run), the internal logic of the game's rules become the lens through which the player looks at choices. You can fit your playstyle to rules as you learn them. And on subsequent playthroughs, if the player's options are well-balanced, you can genuinely play with a completely different character. If the options are intuitive but not balanced, your long-term potential for different playthroughs is diminished because only a subset of options are viable -- or rather, many options inherently come with a difficulty penalty that you may or may not want to experience. JESawyer responded to nzmccorm 29 Jul Do you have any opinions about Phil Fish? I do, but I don't think my opinion on other developers is important. JESawyer responded to frensin 29 Jul Did you ever intend for the Ballistic Fist in Fallout: New Vegas to use ****gun shells as ammo? I intended for several of the Unarmed weapons to use ammo, but we encountered some problems with implementing it. I would have liked to continue with it because I think ammo use/reloading could have helped distinguish those weapons in more interesting ways. JESawyer responded to Springme 30 Jul If you were a ghost, who would you haunt and what would you do to them? i am a ghost and i haunt formspring JESawyer responded to andreykvasha5 30 Jul Why did you make songs for Fallout: New Vegas? I think they were great and a nice touch, but I just want to know why did you see it fit during development? Late in development, we realized that we didn't have songs for the Lonesome Drifter (or Bruce Isaac) to perform at the Aces theatre. Talent Pool was a side quest and it seemed unlikely that, even if the quest was completed, people would return to the Aces to see the performances. Still, we needed to have songs, so I worked out some possibilities with Scott Lawlor and did the recordings with Nathaniel and James playing guitar on the three Lonesome Drifter pieces. I'm not sure where Scott found the Cobwebs and Rainbows instrumental, but it was handy for Bruce Isaac's song. I think we recorded all of the Lonesome Drifter songs on a Sunday afternoon and Cobwebs and Rainbows later that week. JESawyer responded to Iamnotevenme 4 Aug Jesse Heinig is calling you out regarding D&D's ability scores! D&D Through the Eyes of the Rara Avis He is correct that the point buy system will give you a higher sum of ability scores if you stay in the lower ranges. There's not much to debate there; that's just how the math works. D&D 3E/3.5 does not favor generalist characters, though certain classes will suffer more by keeping a number of their ability scores at lower values. Jack-of-all-trades characters can be very fun to play at lower levels, but the math entirely favors specialists as the levels rise. Role-playing/special builds aside, as a non-finesse melee ***hter, if I can have 14 Str/14 Cha or 16 Str/10 Cha (using the standard weighted scale), I'm going to take the latter pretty much every time. I have an additional +5% chance to hit on every attack and an additional point of damage on every hit. The cost I pay is -10% on every Cha-based check I make, which will be extraordinarily rare. So yes, D&D's weighted point buy will give you a higher ability score sum if you keep the scores sub-15, but for many classes/builds, a balanced array is not favored by the game system itself. JESawyer responded to suejak 5 Aug I uninstalled FNV for the first time since purchase today. It's like I uninstalled a friend from my life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdQ1E3t3Qq0 JESawyer responded to Eliot4DA1 5 Aug Is PE going to appeal to people who have never played fantasy adventure games etc. because I would be a new comer to these sorta games. If I buy this game with no experience with this genre, will I still be able to enjoy it? Thank you I hope you will be able to enjoy it, but you may find it difficult. You're managing an entire party of characters and the combat will be tuned for a tactical mindset. However, I am doing my best to remove non-viable build options from the character system and I'm trying to keep the core mechanics consistent. JESawyer responded to MikeBreezy92 6 Aug So did Cassidy have Cass before He met the chosen one or after? After. JESawyer responded to Springme 7 Aug What concerts are you going to (or have already been to) this year? I'm sure I've been to more than two, but the two I remember are Bat for Lashes at The Fonda (awesome) and Björk at the Hollywood Palladium (awesome). I'm going to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor in September. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjW7LaCK0mc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuTtyhhN35A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR9dMM2qv3M JESawyer responded to ninjaxenomorph 7 Aug A question about your New Vegas mod: I saw you modified the gold price to something significantly less. Did you also change the weight to something more realistic? Gold is heavy, but they should weigh about a pound according to the text on the gold model. We wanted the individual bars to be heavy, closer to the Good Delivery standard of 400 troy oz. / 12.4kg / 27 lbs. Ours are 35 lbs. to make them more difficult to remove. Either way, the size of the model is close to the Good Delivery standard, the classic big ol' bar of gold, so the text on the texture is inaccurate. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 8 Aug 9 months ago you stated that P:E's attributes (as opposed to speech skills) would affect conversation responses and that they weren't insta-win options but rather allowed improved player choices. Can you speak more to this; have you made any adjustments? We haven't made any adjustments to it, no. That's still the way it works. Sometimes the option is advantageous, sometimes it's just another option, and sometimes it will work against you. The physical attributes are represented as well as the mental attributes, with the physical attributes often allowing you to perform actions within the conversation. JESawyer responded to Sensuki 9 Aug How is melee engagement feeling currently in the Vertical slice ? We have a basic implementation but it needs to be crisper/more immediate, essentially as soon as the attacker gets within range and stops to attack. Responsiveness in movement (including stopping) and all actions is really important to the feel of the game so we're going to continue tuning that a lot. JESawyer responded to Circleof8 5 Sep Regarding the rogue's sneak attack; is it a damage range bonus, e.g. 3-5, or something else? Right now it is a percentage bonus to damage. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 21 Sep There's some confusion WRT the rogue's "spike damage." What does this mean exactly? Some think you mean burst damage as opposed to spike damage. Can you please clarify for the noobs? I think in close to all cases where I've written "spike damage", I've used it as a verb. A rogue can spike his or her damage output, i.e. dramatically increase it for a short duration. Rogues have a few Abilities for doing this, the most notable of which does increasingly more damage based on how low the target's current Stamina is. JESawyer responded to Somebodies 21 Sep Do you guys have any plans to implement something like "Bloodied" status in PE? Make a wounded enemy more vulnerable to certain attacks, or make an injured warrior's attacks more "swing-y", triggering unique tactics below certain HP thresholds, etc.? Yes. Being below 50% Stamina will trigger statuses, abilities, or behavioral changes in some creatures and some classes, though I don't think we've implemented many of those specific abilities yet. JESawyer responded to ashleyparker26 21 Sep How do the Orlan's defend themselves against the aggressions of the larger races? As a largely disliked race they must have some way of defending themselves as a society despite their diminutive frame and physical deficiency. For the most part, they've defended themselves by retreating and/or resorting to merciless guerrilla tactics. Ruthless orlan behavior is the source of much of the dislike of orlans as a group. In this part of the world, the only area where orlans are on equal social footing with other races is in Eir Glanfath. In Glanfathan legends, orlan and elven tribes both took the same vow to defend the Engwithan ruins within Eir Glanfah. Since then, the tribes have intermingled to such an extent that despite the physical differences between them, Glanfathan elves and orlans treat each other as equals. JESawyer responded to kmelt93 18 Oct How can there be mutated Tarantula Hawk Wasps but no mutated Tarantulas? They're extra-hidey. JESawyer responded to Hormalakh 18 Oct Do you play DOTA2, DOTA or League of Legends? I occasionally play LoL but not as much as some of my co-workers. JESawyer responded to Melnorme 18 Oct Did you remove your pledge from the Divinity: Original Sin Kickstarter before it ended? If so, why? No. I had a credit card canceled and didn't correct the payment info in time.