Any news on phasing?

What a nice coincidence,
today I started -offline- the path of love and found some bugs:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...hings-while-starting-the-path-of-love.101332/

I also wrote about the idea for bringing Charlotte to her mother

 

Two things about this:

First, your bifurcation is artificial and really not at all like any good story. Everything can't be focused entirely on YOU in any game, because you have to impact the world to be the hero. Seeing a child returned to his mother is both. It is something another character is experiencing, but it is happening because I did it. You get satisfaction because the focus is on YOU. The focus is on both. You have to see what other characters do independent of you. Setting up an evil character with their own motivations and behaviors provides the motivation for you to go take them out. The only way to live the fantasy you describe is to be in a world alone.

Second, SotA right now has the epitome of a static story that doesn't care whether I'm a part of it or not. The consequences of your actions are miniscule and impermanent at best. He's not trying to make it that way - that's the way it is. Way back when they first started discussing the story, Richard hinted that they had a way they were going to resolve the tension between single hero/multiplayer. I haven't seen it after completing the whole story line - it's all in favor of sandbox MMO.

 

I disagree DOS2 is a "dead world." You can click on random dialog responses and they can have dire consequences that change things down the road. One I can think of off the top of my head is if you say the wrong thing, a recruit-able NPC attacks you and you have to kill them. This takes their whole storyline out for you. Many, many of the NPCs have backstory that fleshes out the characters in your party. That's the opposite of dead to me. Just because you are moving through a narrative doesn't mean it has to be static!

DOS2 feels alive, not dead at all because your actions can change things at any time. I'm not that far into it, but I have totally had some "aw crap!" moments where if I had made a different decision earlier things would have worked out better for my character.

I would love for SOTA to have more of those moments where you knew right there and then you had affected some change. Not just in a dialog tree, but in a whole series of events.

And yeah, I wondered if I had even really saved the kid in SOTA because she wasn't around anywhere I could find her. I went back to the beginning scene wondering if she was stuck there when I didn't see her in the Outskirts scene.

 

There's an important difference between a 1st person perspective and a 3rd person perspective though.

You can't tell a story in 3rd person and expect the player character to feel like they're important. If I read DragonLance Chronicles, the book isn't about me. It's about the "Heroes of the Lance". The Witcher 3 is about "the Witcher".

That's my point. SOTA is different in that regard because the story is about "The Avatar" and as RG and Lum have explained a number of times, we are all the avatar and we may all make that claim and be "right". That's not supposed to change, that's the point of the game and the main driving force of the story. It's also something that you can't explain the same way if you're talking in 3rd person. We have to think about this as a 1st person narrative or it won't work.

Now then the execution of the story telling is poor right now. It's all fetch quests and there's very little choices for "The Avatar" to make that have any real consequence. But that can be remedied.

It's not about MMO vs. Single Player at all. It's about the way the story is told. It's about the fact that player choices don't matter (yet). You guys are looking at single player games and expecting that 3rd person static narrative to carry you through the game as if that's the holy grail of RPG development, but it's really not. It's really more of a lazy man's way to get a mass audience to be mildly entertained without rocking the boat. There are very few choices that matter in those games, they're all graphics and presentation with a 3rd person narrative that could care less if you make one choice verses another.

Are those games better looking and easier to progress through than this one? Sure they are. But if I wanted to play those games I'd go play those games. This game IS supposed to be different, and that's why the OP comparison is not particularly accurate. What Lord Darkmoon is talking about is making SOTA into Divinity Original Sin 3.

 

Me too.

But again I think you're diving DOS2 way too much credit. The story exists with or without you, the same as it currently does with SOTA.

The beginning the middle and the end are going to "happen" regardless of if you play or don't play. It's going to happen for all players essentially the same way.

What I think SOTA has a real chance of improving upon is not making daughters hug other NPC's but instead making it so the fact that you saved the daughter vs. didn't save the daughter has an impact on the middle and the end of the story in a way that other RPGs don't do.

And from a mulitplayer perspective what I'd love to see is some kind of collective "choice" that is made that impacts the beginning of Episode 2.

 

Are there any single player games that you feel address this issue properly?

 

Your argument is now comparing a book to a game? Come on.

Also every game is like the Witcher. You always adopt a persona. Even the avatar who is supposed to represent you is a persona. To tell the story they can't recreate YOU actually... there have to be assumptions made. No matter how customizable the character creation process is, they always fit you into a world with certain assumptions about backstories, who you are, and what you're capable of. They have to to tell the story. When you play a game you adopt the persona. 3rd person becomes 1st through the limited set of options any game gives you to control the character. It can't be done any other way.

You are so overlooking the technical link between the two. The reason that choices don't matter by and large is because the game is also multiplayer. If someone is killed, they should be gone from the game. Period. The reason they are not is that other players still needs to see them. Stop trying to say this is not a valid point. No one argues that a game should be like a book telling a story - you're creating a straw man.

Games fall into a spectrum of how much influence you actually have, but that's more about the amount of resources developers have to create complex paths. It's not because they're lazy, or appeal to a mass market. In your line of thinking, walking simulators would be the most popular games ever!

 

Why I am comparing the two games is because of the similarity of the quest structures.
SotA maybe wants to be different but it isn't. Otherwise we would't have quests like "rescue the child" or "bring the murderer to justice".
Those are the same type of quests like in Divinity. Just that in Divinity it works so much better.

So how can SotA be different by offering the typical quests but it doesn't offer a satisfying solution?

That is the point: if you offer the "typical RPG" quests then do it right and offer satisfying solutions.
Divinity does this. This is why I brought up the example with the child and his mother.

 

I thought Wasteland 2 did a nice job of giving players choices that had real impact on the world. Not as much as I would have liked, there were still flaws/bugs. But there were decisions you could make that would literally prevent you from finishing the quest line, so sorry, you lost. I felt like you were focus of the story in Wasteland 2.

 

It is not a fair comparison. Divinity is only a single player game (yeah, it has co-op mode, but that's limited to four people if I am not mistaken). They built that game specifically for a single-player experience.

SotA's scope increased/changed/disrespected you (however you want to look at it). It was always going to have a multiplayer component. That multiplayer component prevents a true single-player game at the moment. It was sacrificed for multiplayer. It is restricted by multiplayer. I would say it "appears" that single-player is hampered by multiplayer, but why state the obvious?

Equating a game like Divinity with SotA is misleading. It's a fantasy to say the two are alike. Someone once said that you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. SotA and Divinity are not alike, although they share similar qualities, this is a fact.

 

But don't you agree that even wasteland 2 had like hundreds of cutscenes and story points that would occur no matter what choices you made as a player? Which is really the whole issue?

Early ultima games also let you fail and not be able to finish the storyline, at least not to a successful conclusion.

 

Actually I'm comparing the presentation of "games" to story narratives and I believe it's a good comparison as I laid it out above.

None of my players die in single player RPG's either. I just have to save the game over and over.

But you're saying that respawning is somehow not allowed in a game filled with endless magic? I don't think that's the argument you want to go with here.

No. In my line of thinking people love the Witcher 3 because it's a 40 hour movie that is easy to complete. They like the character of "the Witcher" just like they enjoy "Han Solo" or "Harry Potter". It's easier to make a story about one dude. It's a lot harder to create a story that lets the player advance through a 1st player narrative that evolves based on the choices the player makes. Is SOTA doing a good job of that right now? No. But I give them credit for trying.

It's not about multiplayer vs. single player either. It's about the core design decision to make "everyone" the avatar.

 

LD did not "equate" the two. He compared them. He even gave reasons as to why he felt it was valid. You may not agree but that is your opinion, it doesn't rise to the level of fact.

Someone once said that you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

 

I actually got to a point deep into Wasteland 2 where I couldn't complete the game. And instead of going back and finding a save file, I just thought that was satisfying enough and stopped playing.

I don't remember a single cut scene from Wasteland though. I honestly only remember the choices I made, and for me that's really important. That's what made Wasteland 2 a great game.

 

I just want to point out that it's not easy to have a discussion if you're going to make up what I'm thinking.

 

Factually, the Witcher 3 is not a movie. Metaphorically you could describe it that way. Does it lack complex pathing? Perhaps. That's an opinion call that I wouldn't disagree with. But it's not a movie. There are a lot of other aspects of the game: the card game, the combat, the crafting, etc.

Did you read where I said that complex paths are hard to create? And that it's based on resources and how devs spend those resources? And were we talking about whether SotA developers deserve credit for trying or not? I didn't see anyone making it personal like that. We can all agree that they are trying.

 

It's not my intent to "make up what you're thinking" we're having a conversation here. If I'm not understanding what you're saying, feel free to correct me.

There have been multiple instances during this conversation where I've attempted to correct you on your phrasing of what I was saying. I assume that will continue through the normal course of debate.

 

But framing it so that you are actually somehow insulting or going against the developers automatically devalues your side of the argument!

 

Yes, factually Witcher 3 is a game. Factually I call it a movie because I find the game aspects to be very lacking and I wanted to make my point during this conversation so that I was clear on that. I don't really understand why it's important to discuss it further unless you feel a need to defend the Witcher 3. I think it's essentially graphics porn for low brow entertainment. But that's just my opinion. An opinion shared by other people including Patrick Rothfuss. But to each their own.

I wasn't trying to suggest you said they were not trying, only giving credit to them. I'm not trying to make anything personal. I'm only stating my opinion from my point of view. Obviously we disagree with each other on a number of points and that's ok with me. I'm not here to agree with people all the time.

I seriously don't understand this logic. I said I gave them credit for trying immediately after I said they were not doing a good job.

The idea that somehow that frames my argument in an intentional way to devalue his point is absurd. Even after rereading what I wrote I don't see how anyone could come to that conclusion.

 

You are correct, I used the word equate when he was comparing. My mistake. However, the comparison, in my opinion, is unfair since SotA's focus is not singularly a single-player experience. This last part is what I was touting as fact - that Shroud of the Avatar and Divinity are not alike, because one focuses on a single-player experience and the other does not.

Using the logic employed, I could go and post on the Divinity forums that Divinity is not doing well in the multiplayer aspect. I "could" do that. But would it make total sense? This is all I am saying. I am not defending the single-player experience here. Heck, the entire story is lacking, we all know that.