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Catching the occasional lugie of wisdom from your lofty ivory towers is sating me so far.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:35
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Stephenls posted:New Exalt types, new map, new core cultures and settings, complete overhaul of sorcery including throwing out necromancy as a separate thing (as per current draft), Lunars razed to the foundations and rebuilt (note: we kept what we see as the foundations), focus entirely removed from magitech, high-essence game re-conceptualized from first principles, Evocations.... "More new additional poo poo on top and holding fast to most of the rest" is not the same thing as sitting down and deciding that some parts of Exalted's legacy are stupid and you can do better from the ground up. That includes not dying on hills to defend stupid one-note characterizations and not confusing juvenile conceptions of what mature stuff is and actual maturity.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:36
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Bigup DJ posted:This doesn't have anything to do with the current topic of discussion but I'm working on my Exalted hack and I'm trying to figure out what Night Castes are about because I'm replacing Attributes and Abilities with Caste-stats. Being a Ninja. Eclipse and Night can both be spies, but they way they approach spying are obviously very different. Think Rogue versus Bard.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:45
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Hidingo Kojimba posted:Or maybe a charm/knack that allows for non-violent shapeshifting as long as you hold a positive intimacy to the person your shifting into? So you can still get someone's form without eating them, but you have to genuinely love them and lose the form if you ever stop loving them. Ties a bit into "Lunars caring passionately for causes/people" schtick, means that the "good" choice has its vulnerabilities/sacrifices without being cripplingly sub-optimal. Kerzoro posted:I do also get a bit annoyed at them being unable to get into different animal shapes other than their totem when their anima is showing. What IS the point of that limitation anyway? drunkencarp posted:The Lunar tell & cannibalism restrictions are analogous to, & work about as well as, all Solars being uniquely vulnerable to magic, powerless in red light, and poisoned by radiation from First Age materials. I agree. A lot of the arbitrary restraints and penalties and punishments heaped on other xalt-types (and even ordinary people) feel like they come from a (misguided) belief that they were somehow too powerful and needed some drawback to reign them in. Often iterated multiple times on multiple fronts until they add up to creating a garbled mess, like the huge stack of rules which cripplingly punish abyssals for daring to go to where the plot is. This is frustrating for the end user, as the game is punishing you for wanting to play it, and magnified because it spits in the face of one of main selling points of the whole Exalted line - that you are big mythic heroes who do big mythic poo poo to even bigger mythic badguys. Struggling to overcome a mountain of metaphysical obstacles before you can interact with the world of the living, or need to jump through dozens of ritual hoops in order to look like some other guy, are obstacles for the peasants of the undead or shape-shifting worlds, not the unwritten legend in the making that a starting exalt is supposed to be.
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Feb 4, 2014 18:03
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Stephenls posted:Those are just the things I can talk about. You know how secretive we are. Yes, and it's infuriating.
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Feb 4, 2014 18:52
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Yeah. I trust most of you guys in terms of end product, generally, but I would kill to have a Rose Bailey or Malcolm Sheppard or C.A. Suleiman over there, because the rest of the Onyx Path people put you guys to shame when it comes to transparency in the creative process. Not that that need necessarily be an expectation (though one could make discussion as to the change that Kickstarter brings to the expected relationship between fan and creator), but it just winds up feeling like you guys work for a different company than the WoD people, and it's a really jarring disconnect. Adept Nightingale fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 19:39
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Nightskye posted:Yeah. I trust most of you guys in terms of end product, generally, EDIT: Especially since there have been outright statements to the effect that you're not going to have meaningful mechanics for things like improving your kingdom's technological infrastructure, one of my pet concerns.
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Feb 4, 2014 23:07
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The mechanics are going to be fine, except that character creation is going to be about as much fun as calculating the selling price per carry weight ratio of loot in the new Fallout games.
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Feb 4, 2014 23:22
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Nightskye posted:Yeah. I trust most of you guys in terms of end product, generally, but I would kill to have a Rose Bailey or Malcolm Sheppard or C.A. Suleiman over there, because the rest of the Onyx Path people put you guys to shame when it comes to transparency in the creative process. Yeah I've got no idea how you can work for the same company and yet somehow have a completely different policy re: NDAs. As far as I've read, no one's been willing to come forward and explain why that is. I mean if the higher ups don't care much about NDAs for Onyx Path's other games, why do they care about an NDA for Exalted? Edit: Xelkelvos posted:Being a Ninja. Eclipse and Night can both be spies, but they way they approach spying are obviously very different. Think Rogue versus Bard. And thank you! I felt like this was the case but I'm still not clear on what the Night Caste is all about. Like I said earlier, I can see how Larceny and Stealth fit (Rogue) but I can't see how Awareness and Athletics fit to the same degree. I get that Night Castes use Athletics to be all acrobatic, but what about strength-increasing Charms? I can see how they'd use Awareness - finding people and hunting them down - but I think it says something more than "Night Castes are hunters." I guess the only theme I've noticed between all the Night's abilities is that they're self-centred - they don't really shape society and influence people in the way the other Castes do. Bigup DJ fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 23:58
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Can we dispense with the hill dying metaphor? We've arrived at our quota. I mean I get what it conveys, but I think we need to innovate a bit with it. I'm not sure they actually are bound by NDA? It seems more like they're just keeping things quiet in terms of good sense, no? I mean if I were in charge of Exalted I'd want to gag most my writers too, for a lot of reasons. Vampire doesn't really have the same kind of baggage, nor the same community as Exalted.
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Feb 5, 2014 00:30
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Ferrinus posted:The mechanics are going to be fine, except that character creation is going to be about as much fun as calculating the selling price per carry weight ratio of loot in the new Fallout games.
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Feb 5, 2014 00:54
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Zereth posted:I'm reasonably certain they're going to be better than 1e and 2e, but that's kinda damning with faint praise. I mean, it could be "better" in the sense that it's possible to put yourself only 50xp behind instead of 150xp behind, but once you've committed yourself to costing traits differently in chargen and in play the rest is just haggling.
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Feb 5, 2014 01:18
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Ferrinus posted:I mean, it could be "better" in the sense that it's possible to put yourself only 50xp behind instead of 150xp behind, but once you've committed yourself to costing traits differently in chargen and in play the rest is just haggling.
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Feb 5, 2014 01:24
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Ferrinus posted:I mean, it could be "better" in the sense that it's possible to put yourself only 50xp behind instead of 150xp behind, but once you've committed yourself to costing traits differently in chargen and in play the rest is just haggling. Uh, no. It's not haggling at all. It's accounting. Totally different skillset.
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Feb 5, 2014 01:41
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A game where character building involves haggling with the other people at the table to get features could make a decent gimmick for a storygame.
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Feb 5, 2014 02:41
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Stephenls posted:I have seen this sort of pushback on literally every single R-rated element in the game at one point or another. This quote has been brought up in regards to other stuff sorta recently (the whole Pewdiepie thing) but it goes something like this: "You can make a joke about anything, but if it's about something sensitive, it better be REALLY loving funny." quote:But if we listen to everyone the game goes PG-13.
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Feb 5, 2014 02:43
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Bigup DJ posted:I guess the only theme I've noticed between all the Night's abilities is that they're self-centred - they don't really shape society and influence people in the way the other Castes do. The Night Caste are crime-lords and spy-masters. That's their job, that's what everyone hates and fears them for doing. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 03:00
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axelsoar posted:I mean, do we REALLY lose anything if the core book does not go out of the way to be R-rated all the time? we are 'mature' boys and girls here, we can read between the lines and fill in those kinda blanks ourselves if we want to bring mature content into the fore. I was gonna make an effort-post about how there's so many different things going on, but above was the basic idea that I came up with. Even if I'm not personally bothered by every bit of the R-rated stuff (mostly because I don't read most White Wolf books with any sort of critical eye, and usually miss it due to speed-reading), the idea that the main books need to have these levels of R-rated material is a little silly. That being said, I could see Onyx Path being able to figure out just how many people buy these games based on the "mature" subject matter by releasing a cheap "this is the baby-eating etc supplement" book and seeing how many people buy it.
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Feb 5, 2014 03:01
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ErichZahn posted:The Night Caste are crime-lords and spy-masters. That's their job, that's what everyone hates and fears them for doing. Night caste has been left without a lot of leadership-related charms in the past. Larceny should really have room for abilities that make you super-competent at running huge criminal enterprises and spy networks.
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Feb 5, 2014 03:23
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Zereth posted:Oh, I meant the mechanics in general. But the mechanics-in-chargen are going to be about as bad as always yeah. As a playtester I can confirm that combat mechanics are better than 1E and 2E. However, there are still going to be people who don't like them. Combat is still fiddly and long. This is always going to be true as long as charms exist. The difference is that combat is now more fun than previous editions and there is no 2/7 perfect defense turtling and paranoia combat, which makes things more fun. Combat is more lethal than ever, but defense is more powerful to compensate. The trade off is that their respective increases in power are less absolute. Less perfect effects all around. With regards to Character Generation and BP, that's still in so far. It's just as susceptible to optimization. It does seem a little less blatant about it though. Less "Why the gently caress would I ever spend that much BP on X". Can't really explain more without crossing NDA. Haven't gotten anything else besides combat, so can't really talk further in those areas.
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Feb 5, 2014 12:48
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quote:Combat is still fiddly and long. I could have ignored and excised all the terrible/gross setting details but if combat is still a pain in the rear end, why bother? Slightly less awful is still awful. Nice try, guys. I'm sure you'll nail it with fourth edition.
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Feb 5, 2014 15:15
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Shardix posted:I could have ignored and excised all the terrible/gross setting details but if combat is still a pain in the rear end, why bother? Slightly less awful is still awful. He didn't say it was awful, just that it was fiddly. Wouldn't you expect a combat-heavy game to be mildly fiddly? The question is whether it's fun.
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Feb 5, 2014 15:21
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NIV3K posted:So, do we know how far the NDAs stretch for Play Testers? Obviously they can't share the actual Play Testing materials, but can they share their impressions and opinions about said material? Or is everything locked down tight? I guess this is basically directed at StephenLS or if anyone has seen answers to these questions on the other boards. NIV3K posted:As a playtester I can confirm that combat mechanics are better than 1E and 2E. However, there are still going to be people who don't like them. Combat is still fiddly and long. This is always going to be true as long as charms exist. The difference is that combat is now more fun than previous editions and there is no 2/7 perfect defense turtling and paranoia combat, which makes things more fun. Combat is more lethal than ever, but defense is more powerful to compensate. The trade off is that their respective increases in power are less absolute. Less perfect effects all around. Shardix posted:I could have ignored and excised all the terrible/gross setting details but if combat is still a pain in the rear end, why bother? Slightly less awful is still awful. For reasons just demonstrated, we'd prefer they not stretch this far. Commentary that, in context, seems like neutral statements or even mild praise can easily be offputting to those who lack context, and we're not prepared to reveal context yet. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 15:23
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You know, there's a point at which damage is done in terms of being offputting, and as you guys cycle towards oh, month 9 since the Kickstarter living in a black box... The reason the narrative in this thread and in other places I've been around is still stuck on an endless loop of looking at 2E's worst moments is because you guys have not felt terribly bothered to offer preview material since you took up the collection plate and stopped asking for our money. It's... I dunno, it's really something. You guys are in complete control of the narrative here, and if you're worried about some messaging coming across "out of context," seriously give us some context because you're only hurting yourselves. The only thing I can really figure is that you guys felt burned by the Abyssal preview, and didn't want to risk repeating the experience. Here's the thing, though. Your customers aren't the ones that burned you on that-- the material spoke for itself. It would've spoken for itself in a completed book too, the problem wasn't that we just couldn't see the full picture to truly appreciate those charms. Watching previews taper off since just comes across lie there's lingering resentment that your RPG has to interface with the public at all, and it's kind of... unappreciative, I guess I want to say? To the people who've already bought in, some of us at pretty high dollar amounts. Adept Nightingale fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 15:46
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Stephenls posted:For reasons just demonstrated, we'd prefer they not stretch this far. Commentary that, in context, seems like neutral statements or even mild praise can easily be offputting to those who lack context, and we're not prepared to reveal context yet. I'm fine with taking the slap on the wrist and not saying anything more. But the fact is that I did provide the exact context necessary to understand my statement. Exalted is still using charms, and charms inherently complicate the system to a point that some people don't enjoy. They should not delude themselves that this will be any different. It's in the same vein as the fact that Ex3 is still using the ST system at its core and will therefore be prone to the flaws inherent in said system. These are facts that no amount of material can change because they are basic properties of the systems employed.
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Feb 5, 2014 15:47
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I guess there's nothing like a PM system here? EDIT: Ah, found it.
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Feb 5, 2014 16:20
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Stephenls posted:I guess there's nothing like a PM system here? You need platinum for it (extra $10).
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Feb 5, 2014 16:22
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Well that was certainly the most expensive PM I've ever sent.
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Feb 5, 2014 16:51
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Stephenls posted:Well that was certainly the most expensive PM I've ever sent. Well, it was certainly appreciated, and now you can PM whoever you want!
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Feb 5, 2014 16:55
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NIV3K posted:With regards to Character Generation and BP, that's still in so far. It's just as susceptible to optimization. It does seem a little less blatant about it though. Less "Why the gently caress would I ever spend that much BP on X". Can't really explain more without crossing NDA. Are they actually listening to you about things? If so, can you explain to them that here in the thousand year reign of Luigi we don't put up with this poo poo? Because oh my god dude.
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Feb 5, 2014 16:58
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NIV3K posted:Well, it was certainly appreciated, and now you can PM whoever you want! Maybe I'll buy an avatar next! (I just had the basic account because it was gifted to me and I couldn't get the upgrade page to accept my credit card; now the CC seems to work, for some reason.)
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Feb 5, 2014 17:01
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Stephenls posted:we're not prepared to reveal context yet.
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Feb 5, 2014 17:34
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We all know that five seconds after a draft is released to backers, everyone on the Internet who wants to satisfy their curiosity will be able to do so.
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Feb 5, 2014 17:37
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Stephenls posted:We all know that five seconds after a draft is released to backers, everyone on the Internet who wants to satisfy their curiosity will be able to do so. Yeah, it's just. Like look at what they've got you doing. Swinging by a hostile community and making sure people don't go in circles too hard over nasty stuff that drags hype down. I remember back when the Abyssals preview hit and people were drawing a lineage from it back through Lilun, Holden was like "how long are we going to have to answer for 2e's sins?". That's a fair question! Here's the thing: as far as I can tell, answering for 2e's sins is the only concrete, fully elaborated selling point you've given us. What sold my playgroup on third edition (and then the way they sold it to me) were your really cogent articulations of the problems you were aiming to solve, and your track record of trying to solve them. Like, that's the devs' resume here: being the guys who dragged Exalted out of the nadir it experienced in its second edition. Until you put an actual edition out, you're stuck in 2e's long, dark, rapey shadow, and you realized that from the beginning. You were drawing from the same well as the people who called you the second coming of Infernals Chapter 1. And that well, obviously, is poisoned. I'm still looking forward to Exalted. But we're waaaay past the "put up or shut up" point here. You can't really ask any more of us than exasperation.
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Feb 5, 2014 17:48
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It's stuff like, we don't know the final product. We don't know the procedure to develop the final product. We don't know rejected potential or how you're approaching the development process. We don't know the design philosophy or goals except in the sketchiest detail. You've mentioned offhand a couple of the themes you want to emphasize in this edition's presentation of the setting but I'm not sure if we've seen anything firm on that front. There's a lot that I think you could disclose without creating misplaced expectations. I think it would be interesting to see more positive presentations of underlying goals, philosophies and design. We got some of these much earlier in the process but I think there's a lot we haven't heard about. The bullet points, the style guides, specific notes that must be hit for both game systems and fiction. On the other hand it's Onyx's marketing and how they approach that is their own business - and it is a business decision - and when the product comes out all of this will probably be immediately forgotten. E. For example you said recently that a decision was made to never present sexual, domestic, or child abuse in titilating way. What other guidelines do you have in place for stuff like that? Or even the noncontroversial stuff! What are the rules you've set for yourselves going forward? DOCTOR ZIMBARDO fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 17:58
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Stephenls posted:. . .and we're not prepared to reveal context yet. That's the problem, not that people might talk about what they're playtesting. You already have a pile of sales already from the kickstarter - you have our money. What does it hurt to actually allow comments and discussion on the changes you've made before it's all finalized and locked in? Let people see what you're actually doing, and while you'll get complaints still, they will at least be based on the actual text and not on supposition and half-true rumor. Look at the discussion over Raksi eating babies - there was actual useful discussion that was able to frame the problems people had with Raksi so you could understand it better. Without opening up to players, you won't get that sort of useful feedback.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:06
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No, I get it. That's reasonable. I'm not asking for faith in our competence. I don't think we're going to gently caress it up but given that I'm on the team, I wouldn't; I've admitted multiple times throughout this thread that I might be completely off-base about the way the material will be received. My purpose here is mostly to be visibly not an idiot so that we don't get an echo chamber effect where people on SA keep repeating "Those 3e guys sure are idiots, aren't they? Lol Ex3 is gonna be so bad!" That can happen if people think it's true, or if people just think it's fun or funny to repeat it. There have been points in the thread where it's just people going back and forth reassuring each other about how right they are to believe 3e is a doomed endeavor, and I don't want that to be the preconception people have when they read the book. The tone of the community before the book launches will affect people's reads of it; we want people to read the thing without negative impressions going in. Ultimately only the game itself will prove the worth of the game itself.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:07
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Kenlon posted:That's the problem, not that people might talk about what they're playtesting. You already have a pile of sales already from the kickstarter - you have our money. What does it hurt to actually allow comments and discussion on the changes you've made before it's all finalized and locked in? Kenlon, they have about 300 separate playtest groups giving them feedback right now, speaking as yet another person involved with a group of playtesters. They've got enough people giving them opinions on the game that they can reasonably sort out, and some of these people have absolutely no reason to shill for the game. They've got all the feedback they can reasonably sort through already, and a Pathfinder style Open Beta is going to do gently caress-all in terms of sorting out useful feedback from the white noise.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:12
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I've been one of the ones saying that the game can still be good - hell, I was one of the people defending the initial Abyssal preview as "They can't actually mean it to be as bad as how it's being interpreted." But it makes it a hell of a lot harder to keep faith in that when a) there seems to be a desire to keep bad bits of game design simply because it's easier (BP/XP split), and b) we're not getting any view into what's going on with the rules. We never got a revised Abyssal preview that would help show that the writers had understood the problems with the first one, for example.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:14
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There's a limit to how much success you can have doing what you're doing, though. Like you're doing really well as a PR guy to a group of people many of whom'd be happy to just call you a turdbrain and leave it at that. And it's easy to understand why you'd be cagey about releasing material for that reason, since every concrete thing you've said about third edition has pissed somebody off, and not all of them were right to be. But impressions are gonna trend downward over time no matter what. There's a kind of entropy at work here and simple containment isn't going to stop it. Are you still going to be doing this a month from now? Three months from now? When you stop will it be because the book is out or because this, too, has proven to be a fruitless distraction? These are questions we have to confront from both sides of the screen regardless of whether you're giving us Dragon Age: Origins or Duke Nukem Forever.
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Feb 5, 2014 18:14
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