Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Interview @ Twinfinite

These games are mostly all too long.

One way to address the character building issue (potentially getting "locked out" of abilities by not choosing earlier abilities the right way—without access to a rule book to explain it all) would be to:

1. Keep the system as it is. Wide open, choose everything yourself, mistakes included. For Pathfinder pros and "hardcore players" or those who like to research everything

2. Implement an optional overlay to leveling up. At start, you can choose from a selection of classes where their end-game abilities are described as an overview. So you could choose to end up as an effective Fire-Mage, Fey Archer-Ranger, Beastmaster, Moon Druid (or whatever exotic classes they want to give overviews for, I'm just making these up for examples) and at each level-up time, the game would tell you which abilities/path to take to get to your pre-chosen end result. This could do all your spell choices, and every damn little choice along the way, or let you choose your own stuff. This would also teach by example, so you could see how early choices affect choices several levels down the road. And for your second play through you could choose on your own with more familiarity/confidence.

That way there's a template for N00bs so they don't break their characters or end up with a result they didn't want after playing for 45 hours. And it would still keep all choices wide open for those who prefer that.

This is closer to what tabletop play really is. If you're new to a game, you're likely playing with friends who know the system. And thy'd be there to give you advice, pointers and point out some pros and cons of different choices. That doesn't make it streamlined, or dumbed-down. That's how tabletop works. Giving these kinds of "training wheel" options would be great for a lot of things. Perhaps show how a sneak attack could work once you gain the ability. Show an example of a mage casting a crowd control spell effectively versus just "getting" the spell.

And you wouldn't need examples or character-builds for every single character class. Just some examples. Leave a LOT of stuff there for the more adventurous or "hardcore" (hate the term) players to discover or figure out. But right now we keep having these Either/Or discussions where one side is "streamlined, dumbed-down and immediately obvious" and the other side is "arcane, complex and full of potential pitfalls." I think games like these should strive to bridge those two extremes.

But, all optional. I know it takes resources to do this. But if they really want to emulate tabletop? This kind of help is what is missing, and what nearly every tabletop experience really gives.

Originally Posted by FizzyShellfish
These games are mostly all too long.

One way to address the character building issue (potentially getting "locked out" of abilities by not choosing earlier abilities the right way—without access to a rule book to explain it all) would be to:

1. Keep the system as it is. Wide open, choose everything yourself, mistakes included. For Pathfinder pros and "hardcore players" or those who like to research everything

2. Implement an optional overlay to leveling up. At start, you can choose from a selection of classes where their end-game abilities are described as an overview. So you could choose to end up as an effective Fire-Mage, Fey Archer-Ranger, Beastmaster, Moon Druid (or whatever exotic classes they want to give overviews for, I'm just making these up for examples) and at each level-up time, the game would tell you which abilities/path to take to get to your pre-chosen end result. This could do all your spell choices, and every damn little choice along the way, or let you choose your own stuff. This would also teach by example, so you could see how early choices affect choices several levels down the road. And for your second play through you could choose on your own with more familiarity/confidence.

That way there's a template for N00bs so they don't break their characters or end up with a result they didn't want after playing for 45 hours. And it would still keep all choices wide open for those who prefer that.

This is closer to what tabletop play really is. If you're new to a game, you're likely playing with friends who know the system. And thy'd be there to give you advice, pointers and point out some pros and cons of different choices. That doesn't make it streamlined, or dumbed-down. That's how tabletop works. Giving these kinds of "training wheel" options would be great for a lot of things. Perhaps show how a sneak attack could work once you gain the ability. Show an example of a mage casting a crowd control spell effectively versus just "getting" the spell.

And you wouldn't need examples or character-builds for every single character class. Just some examples. Leave a LOT of stuff there for the more adventurous or "hardcore" (hate the term) players to discover or figure out. But right now we keep having these Either/Or discussions where one side is "streamlined, dumbed-down and immediately obvious" and the other side is "arcane, complex and full of potential pitfalls." I think games like these should strive to bridge those two extremes.

But, all optional. I know it takes resources to do this. But if they really want to emulate tabletop? This kind of help is what is missing, and what nearly every tabletop experience really gives.

I doubt this solves anything. If you want to play tabletop, you can just hardly do that without reading rulebook first. And if you are into these games, you probably like reading rulebooks. Similar logic caunts for cRPGs based on tabletops. If you are interested and like this sort of games, you probably read manual and study the rules.
Making excessive effort to bring the game to audience which is probably not even interested is unreasonable.

I don't think that's excessive effort, if you limit it to a few character builds. And there's a difference between "not interested ever, at all" and "not yet interested because of lack of understanding". Why not approach the second group by giving them a few pointers? They might get that information from newbie guides, or char build guides, of course. But these may or may not be available early during the game's life cycle.

The only real issue I would see: Devs might feel an incentive to balance their game towards the specific builds that they promote, e.g., in terms of build-specific items that are made available.

Originally Posted by Cacheperl
I don't think that's excessive effort, if you limit it to a few character builds. And there's a difference between "not interested ever, at all" and "not yet interested because of lack of understanding". Why not approach the second group by giving them a few pointers? They might get that information from newbie guides, or char build guides, of course. But these may or may not be available early during the game's life cycle.

The only real issue I would see: Devs might feel an incentive to balance their game towards the specific builds that they promote, e.g., in terms of build-specific items that are made available.

I doubt there is any significant number of potential customers, who make purchase of such game based on depth of tutorials or availability of character build-calculator feature (or whatever we name it). Tutorials, auto-leveling features and pre-made characters are available in these games since long ago. But it will never change fact, that if the game is complex, it requires study of rules. And it will never change the fact, that if someone is not interested enough or just lazy, he will not study the rules and either he will not buy the game at all or will not enjoy it. And again - catering to not interested or lazy audience will bring developers of these complex games nowhere. My opinion.

I agree to some extent. A gamer with an extremely lazy, low-effort approach towards the game might become frustrated no matter what.

As a side note: not all games are really doing a good job of communicating the rules. Manuals are not always complete. Deviations from the source material (e.g., PnP rules) are left undocument. And so on. There's nearly always room for improvement here.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
I doubt this solves anything. If you want to play tabletop, you can just hardly do that without reading rulebook first. And if you are into these games, you probably like reading rulebooks. Similar logic caunts for cRPGs based on tabletops. If you are interested and like this sort of games, you probably read manual and study the rules.
Making excessive effort to bring the game to audience which is probably not even interested is unreasonable.

I've seen a Pathfinder pnp player compare the game to a pnp session run by a sadistic GM. It's not just a "read the rulebook" issue from a secondary audience.

Kingmaker's UI does a poor job at explaining the rules, categorizing options and help plan your character at any time. These type of UI worked when games had thick manuals you could check while playing, they don't in the "no manual era".

Even people here, a supposedly hardcore audience for these type of games, had to learn how to play the game from outside of the game. The Watch Tip&Tricks thread has 1,105 replies and over 80k views. It's the largest game specific thread on the forum, it's only beaten by stuff in off-topics/politics and long time sticky threads like Pricewatch.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
I doubt there is any significant number of potential customers, who make purchase of such game based on depth of tutorials or availability of character build-calculator feature (or whatever we name it).

From that perspective, no. But people do read reviews and there's no shortage of them that lament the game's lack of instruction. For my own part, I wish there was a more readily available Pathfinder character creator online, as well as some sort of Kingdom management tutorial.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
I doubt this solves anything. If you want to play tabletop, you can just hardly do that without reading rulebook first. And if you are into these games, you probably like reading rulebooks. Similar logic caunts for cRPGs based on tabletops. If you are interested and like this sort of games, you probably read manual and study the rules.

No. The remark has been made many times about porting board or table top games to computers.

When ported, they lose one major dimension: manipulation of the rules.

To play a board game, a tabletop game or whatever, knowing the rules is mandatory. No knowledge of the rules, no game. Knowing incorrectly the rules leads to play a different game.

One cause for the degeneration of the RPG genre as people convinced themselves that because they bought a RPG book, no matter how they play it, it was RPG.

A port to computer is much different: rules are hardcoded, and with no bug, no matter what, players play by the rules. Any resolution happens as by the rules.
No knowledge of the rules required.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
I doubt there is any significant number of potential customers, who make purchase of such game based on depth of tutorials or availability of character build-calculator feature (or whatever we name it). Tutorials, auto-leveling features and pre-made characters are available in these games since long ago. But it will never change fact, that if the game is complex, it requires study of rules. And it will never change the fact, that if someone is not interested enough or just lazy, he will not study the rules and either he will not buy the game at all or will not enjoy it. And again - catering to not interested or lazy audience will bring developers of these complex games nowhere. My opinion.

Slowly starting to understand the hatred of this site for streaming: it plays a similar part black people do for the american system, anytime american proponents make one of those american trademarked claim, taking a look at the way it works for black people is enough to repell.

Streaming works the same.

Streamers had very little knowledge of the pathfinder ruleset. They even did not know the rules for attacking a swarm. They played on the second to highest difficulty. No knowledge of the rules, no deep learning process. They just applied some generic knowledge they keep applying to vid products they play.

Streamers beat the product without diving into the rules. Utter generic.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Kingmaker's UI does a poor job at explaining rules , catergorizing options and help plan your character at any time. These type of UI worked when games had thick manuals you could check while playing, they don't in the "no manual era".

I had no issues with Kingmaker's UI and I'm new to Pathfinder too (although you will probably say, I have played D&D before). I also never really plan for my characters in depth - I just pick a class, read the ability description as I level up then choose whichever sounds good. I doubt newcomers will be planning build early on either - my guess is all that different class options available overwhelm them, regardless UI.

Even people here, a supposedly hardcore audience for these type of games, had to learn how to play the game from outside of the game. The Watch Tip&Tricks thread has 1,105 replies and over 80k views. It's the largest game specific thread on the forum, it's only beaten by stuff in off-topics/politics and long time sticky threads like Pricewatch.

I don't think the page number of that thread is an indication of how much help players needed - we chit chatted there a lot, not neccessarily talking about tips and hints.

I basically agree with everyone saying there is room for improvement how ruleset is explained to players. I will welcome all life improving features that dont dumb down the system itself.

Which is in line with what I was trying to say, because I believe that dumbing down the system to improve accessibility actually leads to loss of audience. Interested (hardcore) players will become unhappy by less complex system. And uninterested players … well, they still remain uninterested.

Of course its just my impression, but I think that everything in between just doesnt make big enough difference considering how niche this market is.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
I had no issues with Kingmaker's UI and I'm new to Pathfinder too (although you will probably say, I have played D&D before). I also never really plan for my characters in depth - I just pick a class, read the ability description as I level up then choose whichever sounds good. I doubt newcomers will be planning build early on either - my guess is all that different class options available overwhelm them, regardless UI.

You spent a lots of time on the official forums (and even did the beta if I remember correctly?). You didn't get all your information from inside the game with that much exposition to discussions about it.

I do agree that the amount of classes is probably overwhelming lots of people, but classes selection happens long before you start asking online about:
- "why do my ranged spells misses all the time?"
- "Octavia and Valerie are so bad what were the devs thinking"
- "my Kingdom is failing, why!?!"

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
Slowly starting to understand the hatred of this site for streaming: it plays a similar part black people do for the american system, anytime american proponents make one of those american trademarked claim, taking a look at the way it works for black people is enough to repell.

Dude, WTF?

Originally Posted by azarhal
You spent a lots of time on the official forums (and even did the beta if I remember correctly?). You didn't get all your information from inside the game with that much exposition to discussions about it.

I did participate in beta but most of the information I found in game with the exception of kingdom management part.

I do agree the game really need to provide more info on kingdom management (as I mentioned in review) but other parts I got by without having to find info elsewhere.

Certainly never thought Octavia and Valerie are bad… they did well enough in normal difficulty.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Dude, WTF?

Nothing wrong in testing assertions. Ways make tests more or less straightforward.

Streaming grows to play the part for vid products as black people do for the american system. A straightforward path to expose hollowness.

This shows how gaming has turned into a cultural thing. What matters most is to deliver cultural impressions.

After watching streamers, pathfinder showed nothing of the made depiction.

Streamers applied generic knowledge. They did not dive into a ruleset reported as complex. They built characters as they would in other vid products. They beat the product.

There is no need for UI conveying information as this information is not required.
It is needed though to reinforce a cultural impression this type of vid products is complex because it is culturally perceived as complex.

Hollow. Empty. Does not pass testing. Worth only when taken at face value.

Gamers are interested in playing games. Not shells of vid products claiming to be games.