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Originally Posted by Gyson
Are you seeing anything beyond those which I'm missing? If not, then I'm not oversimplifying it

What you are missing is that the second one is part of the first one, killing a NPC can be a way to progress a quest, can you really not picture any reason to kill somebody beyond a random act of violence? Describing as nonsensical havoc the full effect that a dead can have is oversimplifying the possible consequences of it

Originally Posted by Gyson
..and these are all factors that another game with day & night schedules had to deal with (Skyrim). However, Bethesda prevented many problems by not allowing players to kill critical NPCs
Please tell me that this is an aprils fools' joke, none of those factors have any meaningful impact in that game, in fact, I think that you can become the mega ultra archmage knowing only like 3 novice spells. Morrowind? I'll give you that, but Skyrim? That has to be one of the worst examples of player agency I can think of. If that's your frame of reference, I can see why you find pointless one of the options the player has, hell, I'm surprised that you don't find every option pointless based on skyrim.

You should really try the Ultima series, but if you have, and you can't see a difference between the ocean of possibilities in one and the binary (and that's being generous, unary is more fitting) approach of the other, I honestly don't know what to tell you.

Also Bethesda games are buggy as hell, is an awful counterexample in every possible way

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Originally Posted by Gyson
However, one of the comments struck a cord with me when they said:

"Yeah, I'm so anal I have to reload if I ever kill a good person, nevermind whether they're a questgiver!"

..because I have a similar point of view. If I find out I've accidentally killed the wrong NPC or a quest-giver, the completionist in me is going to force a reload. So, all this extra freedom ends up becoming an extra hassle.

Haha, that situation is very familiar to me! laugh


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Originally Posted by rupuka
Originally Posted by Gyson
Are you seeing anything beyond those which I'm missing? If not, then I'm not oversimplifying it

What you are missing is that the second one is part of the first one..

How can I be missing that when I pointed it out myself? It was right before the line you quoted. I colored it this time for you, so you can't miss it:

Originally Posted by Gyson
As far as "freedoms" (in regards to this particular topic) go, I believe we can summarize them as:

1) Multiple ways to advance a quest, which includes makings sure there isn't a set order in which to approach a quest.

2) The ability to kill any NPC without breaking the game.

Of the two, the latter has the most significant impact on production. The two are certainly linked, but the latter extends beyond the first in other ways. Are you seeing anything beyond those which I'm missing? If not, then I'm not oversimplifying it (although I do try and describe them in ways that are simple just for the benefit of the post).



Originally Posted by rupuka
Originally Posted by Gyson
..and these are all factors that another game with day & night schedules had to deal with (Skyrim). However, Bethesda prevented many problems by not allowing players to kill critical NPCs
Please tell me that this is an aprils fools' joke, none of those factors have any meaningful impact in that game, in fact, I think that you can become the mega ultra archmage knowing only like 3 novice spells. Morrowind? I'll give you that, but Skyrim? That has to be one of the worst examples of player agency I can think of.

Also Bethesda games are buggy as hell, is an awful counterexample in every possible way

Your obvious dislike for Bethesda games aside, you said "..factors like spells, information gathered, factions, previous quest results and a lot of other things that aren't just an alive/dead check are going to make the implementation of elaborate schedules hard.". I merely pointed out another game that tackled this same challenge. How you can debate those elements don't exist in Skyrim is beyond me.

Also, I was not arguing against your claim that it was "hard", only that Bethesda made things easier on themselves by making sure players couldn't accidentally kill critical quest NPCs (unless, of course, their deaths were part of the quest). Again, Larian Studios chose to take the more difficult path instead, and in the end it cost the game a major feature that at least some of us were looking forward to. Would you prefer I not express my disappointment in the hopes that a similar mistake isn't repeated the next time around?

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Originally Posted by Cromcrom
they should be able to make a basic day night cycle.

They can. They chose not to, in order to focus on things that directly impact gameplay.

From the blog post Here we go:
"One alternative would’ve been to put in a day/night cycle without a lot of reactivity from the npcs, just for the sake of being able to say that we’ve done it, but that’s something we didn’t want to do. The vision driving Divinity:Original Sin has been that every feature which is in there has real gameplay value and isn’t a gimmick."

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Originally Posted by Raze
They can. They chose not to, in order to focus on things that directly impact gameplay.

From the blog post Here we go:
"One alternative would’ve been to put in a day/night cycle without a lot of reactivity from the npcs, just for the sake of being able to say that we’ve done it, but that’s something we didn’t want to do. The vision driving Divinity:Original Sin has been that every feature which is in there has real gameplay value and isn’t a gimmick."


I can't really agree with that idea. Even a cosmetic-only day/night cycle can still add to immersion. Just because it has no gameplay value doesn't mean that it has no value at all.

However, I think it'd take a strong outcry to make Larian rethink that.

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Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by Raze
They can. They chose not to, in order to focus on things that directly impact gameplay.

From the blog post Here we go:
"One alternative would’ve been to put in a day/night cycle without a lot of reactivity from the npcs, just for the sake of being able to say that we’ve done it, but that’s something we didn’t want to do. The vision driving Divinity:Original Sin has been that every feature which is in there has real gameplay value and isn’t a gimmick."


I can't really agree with that idea. Even a cosmetic-only day/night cycle can still add to immersion. Just because it has no gameplay value doesn't mean that it has no value at all.

However, I think it'd take a strong outcry to make Larian rethink that.


I agree with that. I don't, for example, view the character's ability to sit in a chair as a gimmick. It may not add anything to the gameplay, but it certainly adds to my enjoyment of the game by making the game feel more "real". Wouldn't a cosmetic day and night cycle (even if it's only that) do the same?

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Quote
They can.

Of course they can.
Quote
The vision driving Divinity:Original Sin has been that every feature which is in there has real gameplay value and isn’t a gimmick."

I think the guys at Larian are really really tired, it shows on their faces. Especially David didn't look so well. I am sort of concerned about them. I guess they are closing those 24 hours a day schedules...
However.
And maybe this could mean opening another thread. But what are people expecting from a day/night cycle ? (Not NPC shcedules...)
What does Night/Darkness (for deep, ligthless dungeons...) change compared to Day ?
For me, I would reduce the vision variable. Alot. At least. Already a huge impact.
Then, make sure there is a proper lighting system at night, (either at night or in deep lightless dungeons, so this must exist already). You know, light spells, torch, night vision, Sense Life spells, whatever.
Just with these two things, you have gameplay/immersion impact on the game.
Then, Other night thingies would be a boon (various day/night bonus, night monsters, and so on...), but not required in the beginning.
Please do not tell me D/N doesn't have the potential to have a real gameplay value. Well, actually, it would have the gameplay value the devs give it (just like a charisma or intelligence or willpower stat, it is utterly useless if devs don't make it usefull, but this is another subject). Sometimes, I am confused with the logic behind DOS.
Or DOS is not a realistic RPG, it is an open choice freedom RPG, and I am mistaken. But then, so many things try to be realistic, that this would be really confusing.


Last edited by Cromcrom; 02/04/14 05:36 AM.

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Originally Posted by Cromcrom
Then, Other night thingies would be a boon

Which may be part of the reason they decided not to do a cosmetic day/night cycle. There would likely be a bunch of people with a couple reasonable suggestions (or complaints) each, which would add up. Even just the basics of a day/night cycle is not a trivial amount of work.

Of course a day/night cycle would have gameplay value, even if it was purely cosmetic. I was a little iffy on NPC schedules from the start (good for immersion, possibly annoying if you want to trade/talk to a particular NPC and it happens to be past their bedtime), but was looking forward to the phases of the moon having an influence on magic, etc. Even much less ambitions day/night changes could have a nice impact on gameplay.

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That's a lot more work than a cosmetic change, and at this point the developers seem ready to feature-lock.

Since work has been started on day & night schedules already, I'm assuming the passage of time and appropriate changes to light sources are already in place (and that controls for this are built into the editor to begin with). The same goes for weather. I don't think we can expect to receive anything beyond that cosmetic-only change, however: it gets dark, it gets light, it gets overcast and rains, etc. And, honestly, I have strong doubts even that would happen at this stage.

Without "schedules".. without NPCs of all types reacting to the changes in both time and weather, this particular system is going to be a pale shadow of what it could have been. But that's completely off the table at this point, and just seeing the game world (which is very nice looking graphically) in different stages of lighting based on the weather and time of day would be a treat.

For example, look at these two scenes:

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

Now, they're not the same location, but you can imagine they could be, just at different times of day. Even without schedules, I think it would be neat to see the lighting changing the scenery over time like this. It keeps things visually interesting and helps prevent treks across the same piece of landscape from getting stale over time.

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Originally Posted by Raze
I was a little iffy on NPC schedules from the start (good for immersion, possibly annoying if you want to trade/talk to a particular NPC and it happens to be past their bedtime), but was looking forward to the phases of the moon having an influence on magic, etc.

I always assumed the game would include some sort of "rest" function that would allow time to pass at extremely accelerated rates. Particularly a game like this one that has finite content in each area and no respawning encounters to occupy players with - it would be silly to expect the player to sit around and twiddle his or her thumbs for 30 (made up number) real-life minutes waiting for the town to wake up so he could continue with playing the adventure.

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Originally Posted by Gyson
I always assumed the game would include some sort of "rest" function that would allow time to pass at extremely accelerated rates.

Me too; that's what brought the theoretical inconvenience down to 'possibly annoying'.

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That is a sweet night picture!

I just really hope they add some places that will turn to dusk, night and so on. An example when your out of Cyseal, where in some places it will turn to dusk. I really just hope somebody with allot of dedication can add the missing features. I also haven't used an editor before for a long time last time was from "Rage of Mages 2" I played allot of that game back than on LAN it's so much fun. So I'm gonna try to use the editor for this game when it's out and hopefully it's easy or manageable to add new features to the game.

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Well you can already see some parts of the world are at different places. It looks like sunrise on the Cyseal beach, morning in Cyseal, a rainy afternoon on the west end, turning to night at the lighthouse, and night in the forsaken gardens as well.

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Originally Posted by Stabbey
Well you can already see some parts of the world are at different places. It looks like sunrise on the Cyseal beach, morning in Cyseal, a rainy afternoon on the west end, turning to night at the lighthouse, and night in the forsaken gardens as well.

Yes, which made me curious about what they planned to do back when their intentions were to add day & night schedules. The designers seem to be relying heavily on mood lighting and weather effects for the different areas in the game (e.g. night at the lighthouse, in other areas it's always raining - purely cosmetic rain, by the way, that doesn't seem to apply a "wet" status to anyone, making Larian's "gimmick" concern even more confusing because they're already doing the very thing they discussed avoiding).

If day & night schedules had been implemented, were they planning to display these locations under a variety of different lighting and weather conditions? Would some players get to the lighthouse battle and find darkness and thunderstorms, while others are posting screenshots of a sunny lighthouse encounter? My assumptions at the time was that this was going to happen.

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"- Added environment/weather system"

!

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I missed the news that day and night schedules are gone.

Terribly, terribly disappointing.

On a semi-related note, I just played Age of Wonders 3 and I find it amazing that it's basically the same game as Age of Wonders 1, only with prettier graphics. For example, the AI has not advanced at all in 10+ years. Similarly, the new X-com had to sacrifice random maps that we had in the original X-com, again roughly 10 years ago, and now, we all know that Ultima 7 had day and night schedules, and even reaction against weather and such and now that's gone.

I guess I'm just annoyed that everything these days seem to be about graphics, and similar advances in gameplay lag woefully behind...

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Welcome to the modern world, where graphics are more important than gameplay or depth in many cases.

Yes, I dislike that too.

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I dislike it too. I guess this loss of depth for some cosmetic stuff is what I have been raging against all along. Can't we have a nice and deep RPG ?


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So no Day/Night cycle. Would´ve been nice.
But it´s ok. Get along with it folks....
The returning Glory of CRPG will be in broad Daylight!!! ;-)


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Originally Posted by Gyson

How can I be missing that when I pointed it out myself?

You are describing it as two elements that interact, I'm trying to explain that the link goes a little beyond that, that player agency exceeds by far your definition of freedom


Originally Posted by Gyson
I merely pointed out another game that tackled this same challenge. How you can debate those elements don't exist in Skyrim is beyond me.
I didn't wrote that the game doesn't have spells or factions, I wrote that (in the context of freedom of the player) none of those factors have any meaningful impact in that game . Imaging a version of skyrim where you could kill the leader of one of the faction in the civil war, and it didn't just make the questline unavailable, but actually change how is developed, picture that factions are actually significant and if you allied to the contrary civil faction, the regicide has a heavy repercussion to them, maybe the first faction try a massive attack on the other faction in retribution, or at least add more soldiers to the patrols, but if you didn't align to anybody, they are just trying to found you, or if you are a member of the companions, they suffer the repercussions; and it doesn't necessary need to be just NPC being hostile to some others NPC, maybe you are a highly know Brotherhood member (tho' to be highly know assassin you have to be pretty bad at your job) and the news boost the number of jobs available, because, heck, if the brotherhood can kill that guy, they can kill anybody, is great publicity. Any of those would have an effect in the schedules, and it is not just because of the killing, a pacifist example could be that magic is actually meaningful, so you go to the leader, use charm and make him surrender, of course, the spell is only temporal and when he recover his senses, and if the universe has any consistent at all, he would dismiss his surrender and explain that he was charmed, but the fact that you can impact in such big way the world, opens a cornucopia of possibilities and makes the implementation of schedules really hard.

Emergent gameplay man, can you see how the original skyrim and the hypothetical game are fundamentally different? Emergent gameplay, skyrim virtually doesn't have it, sometimes one NPC come across another, and if one is hostile, the bump each other until one is dead and... yeah, it can happen again I guess, it can happen with important NPCs... but they are immortal so no consequence or emergent gameplay can branch from that, it could be a big deal if the number of enemies is finite and they killing each other has an impact in the total xp a player can have, but that's not the case... let me see... If the enemy got xp for every kill that could make really interesting encounters for the pla... Oh wait, most enemies autolevel with the player, silly me, expecting something to have impact in anything. If you think that the option to killing everybody is the only thing that skyrim lacked to implement schedules, you may want to look a little closer. But maybe those things are too much to ask tho', there no game that doesn't auto level enemies, has a finite number of them and let you kill essential NPC, of what game was this thread originally about?

And is not like I'm expecting Original Sin to be that hypothetical game, that obviously goes beyond the possibilities of the budget and development time, it probably goes beyond the possibilities of our technology, but if it offers even a slightly portion of that freedom, the schedules would probably not make it, unkillables NPCs or not, and that's kinda my problem because...

Originally Posted by Gyson
Also, I was not arguing against your claim that it was "hard"

While not arguing about the difficulty on the implementation of schedules regardless of killable NPCs, you are definitely describing as the determining (even if not the only) factor for the lack of them, like if was the one thing that cost the feature, and if killing everybody wasn't in the game then it would have schedules. Like if they had to pick and they picked wrong.

I can see how someone could think that, killing NPC has been an example more than once about player freedom along with different approach to solve quest. And they definitely are ideal examples, in the sense that they are really easy to describe and understand. Trying to describe player agency and long lasting impact in the game world is harder, my example of skyrim is pretty long and that's assuming that you have a pretty good grasp of the game, for someone that doesn't know anything about it, it lacks a lot of contextual information. But Killing everybody is something that, even if you don't know much about the game, is easy to understand.
So someone, if he didn't have any knowledge of game design, could conceptualize this "freedom" thing as "solving quest and killing people" and with such simplistic concept, if they heard that schedules are off because of freedom, and seeing that there is this other game called skyrim that has (allegedly) different ways to solve quest and schedules but not the option of killing everybody then the logical conclusion is that killing NPCs is the determining factor. furthermore, if somebody else argue that freedom is more than that and it can include factors like the magic system, factions, crafting, etc., An (poorly critical) observation that skyrim has those things too would make the claim nonsensical. The logic is completely valid, is just that the hypothesis are wrong.

For example, just because a game has magic doesn't mean that is actually meaningful in the context of freedom of the player, in skyrim we have two main uses for magic, killing stuff and getting less killed by stuff (and considering that getting kill is pretty detrimental when trying to kill stuff, the second may be just an extension of the first), The first category branch into just killing stuff and being better at killing stuff. The first one are spells that change "is" to "was", basically all the destruction school, and it makes sense "destruction" and all, but I can't stop thinking that some of the spells may have, if the game allowed them, some practical uses. I'm not asking for a complex elemental interacting system like in original sin, is just that making fire with your freakin hands sounds like something that can have many other uses, it just doesn't in the game. Of the second kind, we can count all the buffs, and conjurations made for killing (every spell of the conjuration school), of course all the buff are only useful for combat and have no other use, unlike Morrowind that allowed you to fortify attributes, in fact it has a lot of practical spells, you could walk on water, float in the air and even lock doors with magic and boosting alchemy with magic and viceversa made all kind emergent options, you can find some crazy speedruns taking advantage of these options; man, skyrim doesn't even have attributes. and conjurations are so limited is not even funny, things to kill something or beings with the only use of killing it too. If you could hear all the creatives uses players found with summons in DnD, even in the beta of OS I just found an alternative use for the wolf, is a pretty good (or arguably bad) trap scout, an unfinished game has more player agency than skyrim.

Of the less killed category I was going to make a similar division between just getting less kill and making others worse at killing you, but apparently the game doesn't have the second kind, there are no debuff spells, I thought that I didn't remember them because the game was easy enough without them so I never bother to use them, but no, they just don't exist, only paralyze and maybe "calm" if you stretch the definition. Wow, I expect nothing and i'm still let down. the other kind is obviously the restoration school, and of course, you can't use those spells to save anybody that is scripted to die regardless of the context.

Of the few spells that don't enter in some of the categories, Detect Life, allow you to see enemies through walls and darkness, which is very useful strategic wise, Detect dead, that is pretty much the same with different enemies, Candlelight that makes you see better in the dark to detect enemies and Aura Whisper that let you see enem.... they are kinda samey in their own way. But there is ONE spell with emergent use, magelight. Is like Candlelight but on target instead of oneself, so is not especially unique, but is pretty practical to distract enemies, you can use it to avoid enemies or adjust them for backstab. There, emergent gameplay, and as minimal as that can be, the whole magic system doesn't elevate beyond that.

Similar findings can be made in every other aspect of skyrim, because the price of consistent (read, really buggy) schedules was way, waaaay more than having essential NPCS, the systems in skyrim are restrictive, they chain the player and give overall less freedom, no more. I'm not saying that you can't have both, but the extension of the freedom goes beyond the two aspect that you mentioned and there is a lot of things to consider making then.

So I'm not against you showing your disapproval, if I agree with the assumption that they had to pick between being able to kill everyone and schedules I would totally agree with you, but there is a lot more in freedom than that, and Larian didn't pick wrong, bethesda did.

Last edited by rupuka; 04/04/14 02:32 AM.
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