As much as it cost them in complexity and associated character-creation anxiety,
it’s really cool to have an RPG where we can discuss stats by how interesting the text they give you is (I mean, of course, because your stats are your party members, but still)
this was no cost at all, complexity in the spreadsheet wank sense is a hold over from the 1980s, the best tabletop rpgs today, much like disco elysium, forego this style of ‘avoid the trap options’ system mastery in favor of making every possible permutation interesting in itself
But players have grown ever more anxious about ‘correct’ builds and playing to the meta as their access to external discussion has increased. Additionally, it takes several hours for players to even understand what their stats do and use each a few times. It’s a lot to present it at start and the game reassures you that these are permanent choices. Asking players to make decisions without context is scary and unpleasant for most of them! (that’s why we should make them do it all the time).
I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it for the game, but I would expect the way it was presented to be an issue for some players, and I’ve anecdotally heard players who gave up several times early before, for some of them, sticking to it until they understood it.
as a person who habitually googles ‘best build’ for isometric real time rpgs (I did this for the pillars of eternity games because fuck learning enough of that system to actually develop ‘mastery’ on my own), disco elysium didn’t have this effect on me because of the relative simplicity. Its pleasing to restart a couple of times and have very different opening interactions based on my stat spread and realize that oh, this game works like a good tabletop rpg, not like an AD&D hangover.
Personally, my reaction was: I have no idea what any of these stats and barely understand what they describe, so I’m just going to pick some and see what happens. But I love jumping out into the world with bad builds and, as a player, I actively avoid looking up meta because I consider discovering it for myself one of the most important forms of play.
I get hives when I get fucked over for picking trap options with no signposting and I hate wasting my time, so the typical AD&D/3.x derived RPG hurts to play(without skipping the busy work of figuring out the actual build strategy)because those are basic systemic assumptions (That there are very bad options no one should ever pick, mastery involves figuring out what those are and not picking them, and errors tend to compound until the difficulty curve and character capabilities are totally decoupled)
Disco Elysium avoids this problem by not following that… honestly retrograde philosophy.
100% agree, it’s way more interesting for progression choices to result in different play experiences than significantly different power levels.
But it doesn’t solve the problem of asking the player to make choices before they understand what the impact will be, even if it’s not a power impact – and this game has 24! stats, each as deliberately outside of traditional RPG stat descriptions, that players need to read and understand before they get to play! A player doesn’t know that roughly any build is playable or even what their stat choices imply about their character without a strong ability to read and retain a lot of information, and build a complex abstract model in their head of what it represents.
should also add that deadfire (I barely touched the first pillars) was one of the only RPGs in recent memory I played entirely by reading the skill descriptions in context and thinking about what would be cool to try level-by-level, and the game maintaining a solid challenge that way (in part because not enough people played it to even fill out wikis had I wanted them); I know I fawn over it but I think the combination of the maximalism and the party AI scripting keeping the goal of trying to optimize combat in the back of my mind actually put me at ease and made it more interesting as a result.
That’s a good comparison, because Deadfire hyper-balances its skill choices in a way that’s very effective but which I personally detest, because the removal of anchored stat meanings and two-decimal-precision-boosts removes flavor and the player’s ability to ferret out local optima. I can trust that every decision I make will be perfectly balanced and thus, in fact, meaningless.
On the other hand, my first character was a Chanter, and if you pick the wrong ability (out of 8 at level 1 iirc) you will be useless. I reset about an hour in when it felt like the default npc builds were ten times more useful than my MC.
oh I was I think a moon elemental shadowdancer(? monk / rogue crossclass) with wild knockback who was very hard to actually hit, extremely fun character. I think at one point she could dematerialize through crowds to go kill off mages in back.
my PC and Maia Rua would rip everyone to shreds while Pallegina tanked/revived, the little blue Muppet debuffed, and the oversexed fish man healed. Great party balance
first time i played i died from turning on a lamp during the first five minutes of gameplay
(i was hung over and the lamp was real bright)
Disco Elysium doesn’t completely avoid RPG trappings - it forces you to pass a shivers check later on for example and you might get permanently stuck if you don’t play lamely by saving before every check
The skills are really not equal in terms of interactions - I saw this one guy counting each possible interaction in the game and Empathy and Encyclopedia had like 10x more than Interfacing and Pain Threshold
yeah but encyclopedia’s entire schtick is annoying useless information, and empathy’s entire schtick is mostly annoying useless information, but you picked empathy so you’re a well adjusted human being. but moderate encyclopedia gets you the contact mike speeches, so it is a necessity.
well fuck i really do have to play this
One day I’ll finally convince someone to go in with me on a full DivOS2 playthrough
Meanwhile, this game. The writing in this game so thoroughly obliterates a lot of the other “writing-heavy” games I’ve played lately that I feel retroactively ripped off
like I’ve been saying since it came out, it doesn’t do the combination Terry Pratchett writing + incredible SRPG combat of the DivOS games, and it doesn’t do the sheer hilarious narrative ambition of Disco Elysium, and it’s not an infinitely playable reconciliation of lawnmower sims like Witcher 3, but it is by far the best regular-ass infinity engine style, party-based, isometric RTwP RPG there is, head and shoulders above decades of mediocrity
okay, how bad is the tv show going to be
It’s going to be bad but if they do it like black mirror: bandersnatch then it’ll be pretty funny
there is no way in hell I’m watching a disco elysium tv show brought to you by amazon and sonic. fuck right off