The Arcanum One-Point Fiasco
Вставка
- Опубліковано 22 чер 2023
- I talk about the reason Arcanum shipped with every character attribute, skill, spell, and tech degree costing a single point, and how this led to my specific advice to other game directors on how to make decisions.
- Ігри
"success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan" great quote
very true
A gangster on The Sopranos said that quote... right before getting shot in the chest 5 times, lol. Seems fitting
Sounds-to-me like it's another way of saying, "no-one wants to acknowledge their role in failures". Which I'm not sure constitutes-to-me a 'great' quote.
@@rabbitcreative whats your great quote?
@@rabbitcreativeword something in the most boring way possible and it will be boring, who knew?
The incredible build diversity of Arcanum that you can only achieve because of the very light point weighting is one of the things i love!!
This is a good point that ties to Tim's previous talk about Subjectivity as a director.
Ultimately if you're going to be held responsible for the decision and the other people with opinions is not willing to share any of the blame, at least make it your decision.
@@alexfrank5331I don’t hate it. The only way to fix it is increase the overall increments of skills/levels or add even more build varitities
I really enjoyed it too, honestly. You could make a very versatile magick user or technologist who also is a capable fighter, or has incredible social skills, or anything really. If the heavier points system was implemented instead, the only complete build I could think of would be pure melee-dodge, with maxed strength, or something like that. The only thing that was odd to me was that while you could have a technologist who had maxed all techs (8 doctorates x 7 points = 56 points, plus sickly background and 5 for intelligence, and you're left with 3 points), you could never really have all spells available at level 50 (16 colleges x 5 points = 80 points, even with only child and gnome build you would also spend some points on willpower, there was no way to have everything in one character).
Arcanum is actually my favorite game of yours. I don't care how broken/unbalanced/unpolished it is, it is the most fun to play and immerse myself in. Half-Ogre melee fighter with Circus background and just enough INT to hold a decent conversation is extremely fun to play, its like an Incredible Hulk RPG. The game's themes of classism and racism are darker than Diablo's generically evil hellpits. I love the twist on the "chosen one" fantasy trope. Gorgeous soundtrack as well, I keep the town themes on my iPod.
Tis one the best games ever made
Crazy to hear someone say Ipod these days, haha.
For what its worth, I love the one point system in Arcanum, that is one of the reasons I replay the game quite frequently - decisions are not as punishing as in other games
That said all you said about being in the " lead " role is so true!
The idea of ending Fallout with a party is a pretty fun idea. Instead of the slide show each "guest" could tell the protagonist how they had effected their lives (good or bad), and then you'd get a final ending based on your decisions. That said, the execution of that single ending Fallout has is really strong and has left an impression on me to this day.
I actually love the one-point system. I feel like it's in line with one of the game's themes, which is to have the freedom of action in dealing with situations.
Maybe it could have been refined, but having levels where you can't do anything would feel really bad.
Sounds to me like the system Tim suggested would have given you more freedom. As the level requirements didn't exist until the one-point system was implemented.
@@scullyy sounds awful
Just needed to scale the number of points you get per level, find a happy medium and not completely redesign a system months before release.
Arcanum was such a highlight of my childhood. It was a bit above my pay grade at the time, but it lit my imagination on fire.
Love the setting and game!
Highly recommend coming back and playing it again if you haven't since you were a kid
I've done one good melee persuader and one evil mage and still there was enough versatility in playing to make both reasonably interesting. Though I didn't side with kerghan either time 😂
I gotta say, I dont mind the 1 point thing in Arcanum. Most likely because I mainly go tech, so it allows my character to learn a wide range of things. Specially crafting, that I cant really count on the companions doing as much. But I can really see how this system make magic schools feel less important.
However, I wonder if a middle ground approach would have worked, Instead of each Tree Having increased Scaling per item in the tree. What if each subsequent Tree invested in had an every growing cost. First Tree all costs one, Second all cost 2, third 3 and so on. It would allow the player to early get whatever they want there character to specialize in, but also make them think what auxiliary trees they want and in what order.
I wonder if a system like that would have made people consider their choices more strategically.
Just my two cents.
Love the Videos Tim!
Arcanum needs a sequel, or at least another game in the universe. The world was so rich!
Hoping inXile’s new game will carry the torch
Its so absurd that such a perfect and unique setting is not used at all. A dialectic between magic and machine during the industrial era was a chef kiss. There is so many undertones that can be put into it, idealism philosophy, christianity, agrarianism (Magic) vs materialism philosophy, atheism, city dweller (Machine). Just to name a few things, there is a lot of story and sidequest direction that could be done.
Nah. Let it be authentic outstanding brilliant, which is not mixed wish shit and puke in collective consciousness.
If I remember correctly, the Arcanum license is owned by activision-blizzard now... so yeah, let it rest in peace, lol. I'd rather remember Arcanum for what it was than have another one made and turned into a monetised live-service turd of a game.
can't stop spiritual successors, like eiyuden chronicles is to suikoden.
I made a tech character. The first ally you meet is a magic healer,his spells didn't work on me, so he cast heal until he ran out of magic points.
Also if you choose a mage character you have to choose which spell to cast during combat.
So it should have been default turn based cos of that.
The dog seemed to win most fights for me.rendering my character as merely one of his appendages.
Fallout was very well made and well balanced.
Arcanum had a great setting,and a great opening sequence.
It kept me interested despite the combat difficulties
I actually liked the one point system in Arcanum. Sure the game was a bit unbalanced, but I liked the simplicity and variety of choices it gave you at each level up. I think the balance issue is pretty separate, after all the most unbalanced ability in the game could literally be the first spell you learn on the necromancy skill tree.
dude.
I just found this channel by total accident.
Tim Cain. On UA-cam. The man, the myth, the legend, Tim Cain.
I have a lot of videos to watch in the coming weeks.
im glad that you ended up going with the one-point system.
your original design wouldve been PERFECT.... if the game was much longer and level cap much higher, to make you really feel like you earned your mastery. but the game's pacing was too fast for that system.
i think, by max level, being able to master two schools/skills/colleges while still having a baseline practical character was perfect. if youd gone with your original system, youd have to choose ONE and be unable to experiment, necessitating multiple dedicated playthroughs, and that wouldntve been as fun. one of Arcanum's greatest strengths was its exploration and experimentation.
of course, knowing what i know now about the planned sequel, well... maybe it wouldntve been so bad if things had gone better.
True. But try playing a character that is does not like to risk their life by getting in fights unless they absolutely have to. It is a whole different game if you're only getting experience from quest. I remember playing a magical assassin that would push for invisibility and would use a combination of stun spell and backstab in melee to deal with assassination jobs... She would deal with any animals by pacifying them with nature magic. Has also pulled a couple of shop robberies getting a magical staff with huge damage to enemy fatigue basically using it as a blackjack to beat any witnesses unconscious (no need to kill them really - just don't get spotted by them afterwards, you are a sneaky assassin after all). She would then proceed to pull some risky heists for the Thieves' underground using magic, beating people into unconsciousness, taking the items of interest and leaving. She did not even need lockpick or stealing - she would open chests with magic and stealing from unconscious people is a piece of cake. It was a struggle to get enough points for invisibility though... And melee fights could get really dicy - especially if there was more than one enemy.
@@MotorbreathChannel the issue with how experience is rewarded is a whole separate mechanical issue
though you can always just hang out at the Abandoned Shack and farm otherworldly beings to level up to sidestep that issue
@@Anubis1101 Yep, I remember the friend who has introduced me to Arcanum in the first place showing me the way to cheese leveling: you just go to the plains south-east of Tarant and wander there until you find a random encounter with 4-5 wererats, then you kill them with Fireball (area of effect) before they get to you. Sleep, wrince and repeat. Totally ruined the game for me right away, but I have managed to fix it for myself later as you can see xD Wererats are also not consitered beasts if I remember correctly, so they are immune to pacifying by magic of nature. What I have forgotten to mention in the previous textwall though is that Rooting bystanders was a major part of my assassin's tactic. I would also use White Necromancy to walk among the undead unscathed. And the biggest reason for an assassin to take those Thieves' jobs was that I was running out of quests and I really wanted Invisibility for the Black Mountan Clan mines.
Interesting, the one-point leveling system is something I explicitly praised in an earlier comment on this channel. I concur that, potentially as a result of this change, the game is far from being perfectly balanced, but I'd argue that this lack of balance doesn't ruin Arcanum. What really matters in a single-player game is how fun it is to play, and Arcanum has THE most fun and versatile character creation/leveling system out there.
The one-point skill cost has a number of advantages. It doesn't pressure the player into making leveling decisions they don't want to make. It makes character builds much more varied (i.e. while a game with 10 skills where you can only specialize in 1 has ~10 builds, a game with the same number of skills that allows you to specialize in 3 has ~10^3). It makes character progression much more incremental, which, at least to me, makes the player's progress feel more deserved. Finally, this can help avoid spikes in party strength, potentially making the game easier to balance.
I think the main problem here is that the cost of skills was changed near the very end of the game's development. It wouldn't be a problem if the game was designed to work this way from the very beginning.
All of this is just my opinion, of course. I don't have anywhere near as much game design experience as Tim, nor have I put as much thought into how this game's systems work and interact with each other. I have nothing but respect for Tim and everyone else who worked on this game!
Well, there's a different solution to this problem - Borderlands. You always have something you can spend your skill point on when you level up, but reaching major skill caps requires investing a lot of point into a single tree. Simply adding a lot of filler skills helps a lot. Even better if they aren't just filler skills, but also add something valuable to the gameplay.(something more valuable than +0.3% melee damage)
The one point system is great. Arcanum may not be balanced but you can mod that balance to your hearts content.
I agree. The one-point system was a good one.
The described original system I already dislike. Such systems are overly limited and give more fun to its designers than to most players.
The one-point mechanic was fine. Its implementation/polish wasn't. Two different things, should be decoupled and evaluated separately.
I wish I could like these videos more than once, sometimes. Tim just makes so many good points and gives such good insight.
But, I'm pretty happy they went with everything costs 1 point in Arcanum, even if it makes it unbalanced. It makes the player feel like every level up is an award. I also wish they had the time go through a final balance wave but I love how some builds are just better while others feel more rewarding or challenging.
Re: the Fallout 1 time limit. I don't think the initial time limit was bad, given that the game pretty clearly directs you towards Necropolis and the initial zone is pretty well contained. I would *definitely* critique the choice to have endings gated by time. This makes exploring the world feel like a trap. And it really doesn't help that a lot of quests are time burners (e.g. the Raiders on the farm burn 21 days there and back, the Brotherhood sends you halfway across the map and on an initial run you'll probably have to run back for supplies, the hardened power armor requiring books from the Hug).
I think the original time limit was 90 days, but it was extended to 180 days with a patch. The original 90 days, I can understand feeling pressured. It's also possible to miss the clues to Necropolis. I only remember two people that will clue you in about Necropolis, the Water Merchants and Talius (think that's his name). Both can be missed if you chose the wrong dialog options. The Water Merchants, if you ask them about work, they won't speak to you about anything else until you do a job for them. If you're rude to Talius, he won't talk to you.
I didn't play Fallout at release, so when I did play it, it was post patch with the extended timer. I remember my first play through, I kept notes as I played. Part of the way through, I had to stop and didn't get back to it for a month or so. I had lost my notes, so I was going off of memory from then on. The last thing I remember was someone telling me they were from a vault far to the south under a church, so I was fixated on that. I couldn't get anywhere with that, so I went to the BOS, then the glow thinking maybe they'd help. After all of that, I was down to ~30 days and the only location I hadn't visited was Necropolis. I remembered talking to someone that told me they were from Vault 13 and went to Necropolis and didn't find anything, and warned me not to go there because it was overrun with zombies or something. That's why I didn't go there earlier, but I didn't have anywhere else to go. I was about to head there, but with the time running out, I decided to scrap that playthrough and start over when I would have time to play it uninterrupted. I might have been able to go there, get the chip and back to Vault 13 in time, but I didn't want to find it just because it was the last place I had to look for it.
@@jimnms That's a good point. I do think having the singer in Junktown put the Brotherhood on your map was an error as it was a major distraction in the first half of the game. What they maybe could have done was to have a part of the Deathclaw quest integrate with pointing you towards Necropolis. Say having the dying Mutant be from the Necropolis garrison and then having a second part of that quest be investigate Necropolis. Once you reach Necropolis it is immediately made clear that they have a water chip, so it should be smooth sailing from there.
I haven't played Fallout 1, so I'd love to hear how it tackles it. But I'm generally against time limits in any game that expects the player to do side quests. Cyberpunk 2077 is a nice example of that, where there's a narrative time limit, and yet the player is still expected to help John Doe over there with a task that frankly just burns time for no reason. The game doesn't impose any real time limit to the player, but if you try to get immersed into the story, then your default reaction may be to ignore most of the side content. Conversely, if you try to ignore the story and form your own, the urgency is brought up time and time again, clashing with a 100% playthrough.
If the game wants a real time limit or a narrative limit, then I personally think that the ending should allow for a path forward. No rewinding to "the last valid save point", but a narrative path that allows you finish the main questline, and then complete the side quests after it. That way you can get immersed into the story, and experience the side content as an epilogue to it.
Thank you Tim! Wonderful insights! I know this is not the point of the story but I can totally see where every party was coming from in the Arcanum one-point fiasco:
Having a single point per upgrade:
- Easier for the player to reason and plan for
- Unfortunately it requires significant planning from the designer side to make sure access to the good stuff is restricted somehow
- Offers the feeling progress on each level up as you can usually buy something you want (no need to store points etc)
- It can promote specialization (depending on the perceived value of lower level abilities vs higher level ones) since going depth first is as cheap as going breadth first
On the other hand having upgrades cost increasing number of points:
- Requires patience from the player in both planning their build and executing said plan
- Easier (at least conceptually) for designers to balance
- Promotes generalist characters as it is easier to buy more low level abilities (skill ranks, spells, tech disciplines etc)
Both can be fun and frustrating under different surrounding game mechanics and character sheets!
PS: I love the harm spell; also you likely already know but the "Stun" spell under the mental college can stun lock Kerghan with high enough magical aptitude... fun times :)
Excellent commentary about Leadership in general, not just when directing video games. Some good lessons in this video
In regards to the Waterchip timer I used to hate it as a teen, but eventually grew to appreciate it as an adult as it introduced stakes to the game, in a way that I don't think many RPGs ever do.
An ACTUAL timelimit and my actions have consequences? Pump that shit right into my veins.
Good to hear from you every day Tim. Arcanum video awesome stuff
Hi Mr. Cain! Long time FO, Arcanum, and ToEE fan here that just recently stumbled on your channel. I really love these lessons you're giving on team management and game development. I completed a Systems Engineering degree a while back with a focus on Human Systems Engineering, and these are the kinds of lessons really resonated with me. So many people out there that a running a project or team just completely forget that, no matter how good your design, ConOps, WBS, etc. is you're going to need to address the human component of the system on both the user and engineering side, but it seems like you've got a good handle on that.
I think what players were reacting to in the multi-point system is the feels-bad of having to save points (and thus not get anything for leveling) rather than then next thing costing more than the previous thing. I think that could have been addressed by tweaking points earned per level (perhaps increasing as well) and cost of spells (while keeping increasing costs of specialization) such that even the most expensive spell could be purchased by spending all the points you just earned. It's hard to come up with other solutions when 13 other people say, "This is bad and here's the obvious solution."
The classic talent system in World of Warcraft solves this problem in a different way. It is a "one-point system" where you are able to get some benefit for each point (e.g. 1 point gets you 1% crit, 5 point get you 5% crit), better talents require investment in the previous tier, and some talents have strict prerequisites. I like it a lot.
What a great answer: have the humility to trust your team with big decisions, and don't dwell on the bad outcomes (but definitely file them in the "experience" bin for later). I would play the hell out of an RPG about being a game director made by Tim Cain.
I really love the timer in Fallout 1. Never had an issue with it and it adds a great sense of importance and realism to your quest
One of my family members would be considered one of those 'quiet powerhouses' in IT, and they told me the exact same thing. They had many opportunities for promotion to be team lead, but they liked where they were and they saw a lot of team leads get thrown under the bus. They're still working in the same company but all those team leads aren't.
I think the water chip timer was a good idea because it gave the game a huge sense of urgency and purpose. I also really loved the water merchant idea. I feel like I was able to reach the water merchants well before the time limit simply by chatting with a few people and discovering the Hub. But by the time I signed the deal with the water merchants, I wanted to explore more of the world more than I wanted to find the water chip. I think a good compromise for me personally would've been to keep the time limit, then have the ability to sign the contract with the water merchants to extend the time limit, then have an optional quest to remove the time limit altogether, albeit with high skill checks or consequences.
I love your one point character attribute skill tree gave you the freedom to build a great character had a alot fun messing around with it . :)
The thing you said about the quiet power house avoiding positions of authority is absolutely true. A lot of names of great people I've worked with came to mind when you said that. And you know what, I also think they might have had the best way to see this all along. But yeah, games need people to make calls and take the blame as well, so I guess it is all a matter of knowing what you are getting into. (Thank you for making all those videos btw!)
This was a very good video, thanks again Tim
This is such a great video, anyone that has been a lead knows this feeling. Thanks ❤
I picked up arcanum on steam after hearing you talk about it and I'm really enjoying it, also would love to hear more DnD stories :D
Damn, people using steam... puke
@@TrueNeutralEvGenius now that's a new kind of bait lol
why not gog?
@@zerpblerd5966 it's not bad but it's slower, has less features and the main feature it has that steam does not (integration with other launchers) is still buggy as hell.
Like 3 years ago I honestly thought gog would be my favorite launcher, but in these 3 years they barely fixed and/or added anything worth mentioning, so now it's kinda just a dead launcher to me that I barely ever use
@@d4n5t3p3 All launchers and platforms are for lazy fs and lamers.
It really is quite an interesting perspective because like so many other commenters here I loved the one point system because of how much you could do with it and how you always felt like every level was its own reward. I can see why it felt like a bad decision but ultimately getting some sort of reward every level while still building up to that final spell or some other such goal is something I found to be very fun as a player. Overall despite it's many flaws the game turned out to be one of if not my favorite CRPGs so it's fascinating that its a game that's haunted you for so long despite this. I suppose the sales were what was important at the time though and I understand that.
Love arcanum. Arcanum 2 one day!
Tim, your video thumbnails are art.
Honestly, the one point system is one of the things I love the most about Arcanum.
Great advice. Thanks!
I want to tell you that the water timer was a very good thing! When I played the game for the first time, I was really worried. I did not know how long the search would last, and bought a caravan of water as soon as I could.
At the same time, during new playthroughs, I already know how easy it is to save the shelter, and this does not cause any inconvenience.
This is a great example of a design decision that helps you immerse yourself in the game for the first time, and does not interfere with the next time you play!
Great advice and insight!
I think The Master is, not even close, the best villain in all of gaming. Would love to hear your thoughts on him, creating the concept and all that. I'd gladly hear 2 hours of content on The Master from the dev himself! Love your recent stuff on yt either way!
I've been in this kind of situations before at my work, when crucial decisions had to be made and, whenever an option was gonna be taken where I thought it would have bad repercussions for the project (and the decision was made usually because a boss or someone upper in the chain "just said so", so it couldn't be changed), I ended up agreeing to follow up, but gave in a written medium (usually via email) the reasons why I thought it wasn't a good idea and that I was in disagreement with the direction taken. That way, people stopped using me as scapegoat when the problem arose later in the project, because if they tried to put the blame on me, I just showed them the evidence (which happened a couple of times before those people stopped). The other thing that started to happen is that the higher ups started to listen more to me and my colleagues when we raised the flags whenever similar decisions were going to be made.
Your points are not exclusive about game development, not by a long shot.
To be clear: I'm not complaining.
This just reminds me a lot of my job. My last ~5 years were a long list of "I told you so" sadly I was for the most part in no position to actually change these faulty decisions.
The tricky part I see is that often people who can make a decision about a project are too distant to the actual work and they are forced to waste their time on the suits and those people actually doing the work who see the train approaching the brick wall are not listened to.
The point is hindsight is always easy and I applaud you to change your mind to outside pressure, especially if it came from other creatives or the devs. We all can be wrong occasionally, but it's better to try and fail than to never try.
This video holds a lot of interesting thoughts and yet the real difficulty is deriving appropriate actions.
Quite often people become leads not because they want to but because they are told to or there are just no other options other then quit (for multiple reasons). Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom!
Peter Principle :D or Dilbert Principle if you're in the dark timeline
Arcanum is my favorite setting. Dwarfs wearing steam powered armor. I wish there were more games like this.
I’ll be honest, hearing you talk about the one point system has convinced me to actually play Arcanum finally.
Something I really like in games is when they just shower you in power and points and stuff. It always feels really good, even if every build ends up feeling the same. A lot of CRPG’s feel like they end up convening at “fighter is the optimal choice” for a variety of reasons, mostly main character death leading to an immediate game over requiring a high durability character.
this is part of why I never wanted to be a lead artist even tho I had the chance multiple times. I'm a principal and It's the right amount of input and impact, without the stress of endless meetings and politics while keeping up with my skills and work and overall the things I enjoy.
Unrelated, but congrats on 30k subs! That's super impressive for only making videos for over 1 month w/o any previous big following.
You even have a consistent viewership. Even some people with a million subs have less views on their uploads, bc most of their subs aren't active viewers. idk, ig it's just nice to see your channel grow and have high retention from fans.
Hey Tim, whats your opinion on Fallout 2 total conversions like Fallout Nevada, Fallout 1.5 and Fallout Sonora?
Fallout Sonora is such a good love letter to classic fans, It even starts with "To Timothy Cain and Co."
a fellow warlockracy enjoyer i see.
I think the time limit and invasions in Fallout gives it an interesting edge. It could've been an optional mode as a compromise.
Optional mode is exactly what I was thinking. Thank Interenet that we now have mods to choose.
And still none of it would have been possible without the legends that have came up with all those games and ideas and put in the work in the first place.
The Arcanum "one point fiasco" is an interesting study. I think the big balance on that is that each point is harder to get because exp levels become larger and larger gaps. And unless you play heavy into melee or direct damage builds then those levels become really hard to achieve. Thieves, diplomats, and pacifists would suffer greatly under a graduated tree system. You could counter balance that by awarding more points with smaller exp levels, but then that might encourage jack of all trades builds rather than mastery builds? Either way, even though you have strong feelings about the point system, I don't think that it damaged the game much, if at all. If nothing else, it makes the game a bit more forgiving, especially for newer players who like to experiment :)
It's been years since I played Arcanum but I do fondly remember some quirks....my favourite weapon was this "fire axe" that was cursed and had extremely slow strike times. But it was great, because when it did hit, it hit hard regardless of the curse that was on it.
Or the NPC quirks...I remember solving the entire Iron Clan side-quest and the dwarf still hated my guts. When I would talk to him he'd give me that pissed of "....was there anything ELSE?" line.
I really should try to play the game again someday soon.
Wonderful having these insights into Arcanum development. Ah, yes, the Harm spam. I made use of that frequently. Magic was just so overpowered compared to tech. Honestly though, it was quite fun. It seems a bit backward, but I actually wish that games would ship with a standard balanced mode and an "overpowered" unbalanced mode. In Arcanum's case, I think the story and world was just so engaging that it overshadowed the unbalanced magic combat system a little bit.
Water timer isnt patched out. The hidden timer of mutants taking over the world is removed. The water timer i kind like but for a first playthrough (and a few after maybe) it isnt good like you say as it rushes a new player and they miss a lot of the fantastic world. The mutants taking over settlements is a longer timer but the first few levels of them destroying towns is rather fast. But for replay it is kinda cool. Ofc my love for Fallout makes it hard to say what would have been better as it is sooo good!
That troika shirt is maximum drip
More like Tim Context, am I right? Jokes aside, I do appreciate that you bring nuance to the things you recount. Thanks for sharing these!
I loved the one-point system, since it gave you the power to fully explore what the game offers in terms of themes. You could be a truly renaissance man as a consequence - the only person who would surpass Vendigroth and defeat Kerghan
Your leadership lessons are equally valid beyond the gaming industry.
On the Fallout time limit side of things, I only played FO1 about 4-5 years ago, but I loved the time limit. It made the world feel very real and got me a lot more engaged in the game's world. I remember when playing FO2, it felt like the time limit seemed pretty artificial and that pulled me out of the game a lot more.
I enjoy levelling in Arcanum more than in any other game. On average you'll gain about 5 levels per "chapter" and typically use that to raise an attribute by 3 points to unlock new skill levels and then raise 2-3 skills by 1 point. That means you'll always be planning ahead: "am I going to need my Firearms, Summon magic, Persuasion or Lockpick more in the next area?" And the next town or part can go differently based on what you prioritized. Yet because attributes give you a secondary stat bonus even the mid-levels feel meaningful. (You're not just saving up points groaning and waiting for that 5th level.) It's such a simple yet fun system.
It's weird to hear you criticize it, when it was successful and innovative. I've played tabletops similar to the original "saving up, increasing/variable cost" system and people seem to universally HATE it. Why? Because it makes level-ups unrewarding. You get useless points you're sitting on that you can't yet spend. And note that levels already have a scaling xp cost, so why not just build scaling into that? So that level and skill increase happens at the same time? And players get rewarded when levels tell them they're getting rewarded?
I miss troika games, you guys were awesome
Tim I hope you know if you ever stop doing these on a daily basis my entire home will fall into disrepair. this is perfect content to listen to on a daily basis while I maintain the little things
Wow, that last 30 seconds.
Tim and Leonard truly were the most benevolent of dictators.
huh I actually liked the water days limit idea.
I remember seeing it for the first time and being a bit annoyed, but then after thinking about it, it made sense.
I remember finding the water merchants which gave me more time to find the water chip. Then I found the water chip, and at that point I wasn't too rushed and was able to spend more time on a lot of side quests.
13:45 Tim that is basically how I feel about any career. Being the top dog means taking the most flak. I work in public education in an administrative/front desk role and while people turn a lot of their frustration on me its always clarified that the "orphan" who has failed is at the top of the chain.
I love the thumbnail!
Hello tim, i don't know if you read comments but i just wanted to let you know that, arcanum has shaped my life and made me into the person i am today which is someone who loves writting and adventure and making games, a very creative person, and i would not be this way if it wasn't for arcanum which is a game i replay from start to finish every few months since i was about 7 years old, i send an email to obsidien a while back over it i don't know if they forwarded it to you like i asked them too but, thank you for making such amazing game thank you for still making amazing games, and if i ever make a game that sells a lot of copie ill buy the license to arcanum and ill sell it back to you for 1$
I love the one-point system, I would not have enjoyed Arcanum without it. I still miss the Automaton Gunner that could have been implemented as a result.
I'm a one-point believer. Believe it or not back then I actually felt there weren't enough skill points even when you got to end game, I remember meticulously planning out my skill build in my notebook as a kid. Maybe I missed out a bunch of stuff in the game that gave you more experience or maybe I just wanted to do too many things in my build (it was a sneak throwing build with the aerial decapitator), but I enjoyed the one point system 😄.
I don't mind the 1 point leveling in Arcanum. BUT it would be cool to try to play the way it was intended to be though.
What does bother me a bit are the fraction bonuses (+0.5 Prowl, +0.25 Melee, etc.). Especially how they're not accurately explained in character creation :) Then there's no way to round off those fractions through leveling and you can end up "wasting" points.
In any case, thanks for the video :)
mistakes stick out and are easy to remember. it's easy to forget all the times your assumptions were absolutely correct.
Hope you are having a good day Tim :)
I love that shirt!
It may not be balanced but it sure is fun!
I am loving that thumbnail
I think alot of this is subjective though because I loved the levelling system! I also used to just keep all my points after levelling until I literally couldn't progress any further in the game; and then (after saving ha) spend loads of points in one go to explore all the cool different ways you could build your character
I would kill for one of those Troika shirts.
I think going with the team's opinion was the right call. When 13 professionals, no matter how many QA people, all say the same thing, and you can't convince them otherwise, it's most likely that they're right. Unfortunately as this case shows, "most likely" isn't the same as "100% sure".
Also isn't it possible that their complaint (that having a level where you can't progress at all feels terrible) was founded, but that one point buy just wasn't the right solution for it?
The way I like to think about leadership positions is that taking one on is (or should be) committing to a working relationship with the teams and individuals you get to lead; at the end of the day, you are responsible for all the decisions the team makes. You get to guide that decision making process; you can drive for consensus, decide unilaterally, sacrifice a chicken... etc. You are also accountable for the results of the decision regardless of what approach you used to get there.
Each approach has consequences; I feel like you were doing that calculus when you decided to step out of the way and accept the choice the team preferred. You could have instead made the decision unilaterally, and that doing so would have come with a different set of consequences, perhaps in terms of team morale and in terms of the quality of the gameplay. It's hard. :)
I've found that people new to leadership positions often struggle to understand this dynamic; those who are exceptional individual contributors more often than normies like me. IMO its one of the most important things to understand when leading people.
Having mainly worked retail, hearing stories about how priority is taken into account kind of kills me. In retail, there is no priority. There's, "Serve every customer with a smile on your face, AND get everything done." So when you prioritize the customer over all of your other duties, and then certain things don't get done because you had to babysit customers all day, you get written-up. If you prioritize getting everything done, then when a customer writes a letter to your district manager about how no one was available to help them, you get written up. There is no balance, because your team is always intentionally understaffed, and there is no crunch, because you get written up if you hit overtime. This all leads to perfectly competent people accruing write-ups, which are absolutely brought up during performance reviews. It makes me wish all those times that happened to me, I just had to hear crap from customers, and not have my raises withheld.
I must have played the unpatched version since I remember losing to the timer on my first run! I think it absolutely made the game better though, there *should* be tension and the need to save your people. There's plenty of time after that to do sidequests and whatnot.
Hi, Tim! Many people are talking about Arcanum sequel and how great would it be to happen. And I imagine it could be something like Fallout sequels or Outer worlds, which are great games and I enjoyed playing them. But at the same time I love to replay old Fallout and Arcanum and Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. And I enjoy the "material" they are made of: old prerendered graphics, bulky beautiful interfaces, music that does not involve orchestra. I don't want to see them remastered. I would even like to see a game made of those "material". It's like enjoying old paintings. What do you think about that? Would you make a game that looks like and is played like late 90s RPG? Or do you see them as relics of the past and you would rather work on more modern looking projects?
So true, sir, so true. I wish I had avoided going all the way to the top.
I can definitely see a story like this happening nowadays, but I'm surprised the "no bad ideas" perscription to game design was still prevalent then as well. It feels like people are extremely averse to making anything that creates friction with what the player wants to happen.
I wonder how much of what people hated could have been fixed through UI, for exemple the fact that people had points left over, if instead of having to buy it at once, you put 3 points in that spell that costs 9. And it just fills a gauge, and once that's full you unlock the spell. That way it still costs the same, but you spend all your points at each level.
Hey Tim, were you involved in Wasteland (the original) and did you know Michael Stackpole? Battletech was my introduction to "the nerd world" and I've found it amazing how many franchises I've been enamored with that included contributions from people involved with Wasteland.
The worst of it is, if you don't let them get some of their ideas in, even the bad ones, they also won't want to work with you. Heavy is the mantle of the one that wears the crown. I've been in business since 2009, I understand.
The thumbnail caught me so off guard, hahaha
As an Arcanum mega-fan, this isn't a problem. Yeah, there are some balance issues with Arcanum (guns relatively suck as a choice). However, the vastly overpowered characters are fine. I used a character who had a 20 STR, 20 dex and carried a backpack full of balanced swords, who in turn based mode could just hack through any challenge. It was fun. My evil mage play through of a character that I could click fast enough to turn anyone into sludge was fine. It was also fun. I'm not a powergamer, but it's really fun to mash together skills and spells and whatnot and find something that works really well, even if it makes the game trivially easy. I was talking with my brother the other day about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and I was expressing how cool the unit designer is because you can invent units that are (mostly) unique to your playthrough by getting creative. Of course, other players could make these too, but because they weren't something the game told you how to do or give you a prebuilt template, that was really fun and cool. Arcanum is another game that lets you do this. I don't think it would have been as good if you could only invest in one or two colleges effectively. It's okay that the main character is a Jules Verne protagonist polymath. It's okay that your brainy detective can also casually bend cast iron bars. The term "Victorian supermen" exists because it is ingrained in the tropes of the era. It really made it feel like your character was a protagonist of a 19th century novel. It was cool. I like it.
I also really like the time constraints in Fallout. I think they go a long way to making the world feel real. I also like the restored content (I don't know if you guys had this) were the supermutants would start hitting settlements if you were taking too long. I want to feel like my actions matter and that if I do nothing, the bad things will happen.
I've made my most recent playthrough of Fallout with this restored second time limit that I may or may not have set a bit too low during the installation...
So I was taking my leasurely walks over the wasteland preparing for the final push when I've started finding towns empty with puddles of blood (I think) and supermutants everywhere. It was at this moment that I realized... I done goofd.
I've tried to get into Mariposa, but I think that the door was locked and I could not trigger the radio talk for some reason. And I also could not find an electronic lockpick anywhere because almost all of the settlements were now overran by supermutants. So I ended up going to Necropolis and talking to the super muties there, telling them that I want to join, killing the Lieutenant, blowing up Mariposa and completing the game in what felt like a photo-finish.
These things can be a lot of fun sometimes.
I love Leonard s ending in Fallout ! :)
Personally, I'm glad you went with the one point system, I think in the end, the character gets balanced out either way, if you're a mage that dumps points into willpower and then every spell they can get, they will suffer in physical combat, social skills, etc, of course the bugs that come with all of that are an entirelly different matter.
Given how relatively short the game is and the way it lets you have a diverse build more in line with the settings flavor I think your team had it right. If things had been gated the way they were I don't think it would have become as known for letting you do all it lets you do.
While currently going through my first Arcanum playthrough, i have discovered just how powerful that Harm spell is lol i dno is it possible theres a mod that can change the 1 point leveling and maybe balance some of the skills and spells?
imagine if you had to save points for levels and levels to get a high level spell. Wouldn't it suck having to save 8 levels worth of progression to finish a spell school? Yeah you needed another couple balance paths, but one point was the right move in the end.
The one point system issue is interesting. Because despite being a person who typically loves to go pure Melee/Dodge and make a regular "Knight" character. I have tried multiple times to play a mage who only invests in 1 school and found it incredibly hard to be committed purely because of the fact I had spare points and no reason to save them up for spells I had no access to yet.
I would go "Well I have spare points... uhh I guess I'll dump them into fatigue or WP and just buy the next spell later" or I'd cave and delve into other schools and default back to being an all rounder mage or an all rounder character in general. I seem to be in the minority here but Arcanum does feel to me that specialization was always meant to be important, I've personally never had any issues holding onto points for something I want to buy.
That seems like a weird hang up to have. Perhaps I'll attempt to see if I can mess with cost when I return to it and see how it feels to play.
Excellent Blue shirt with Troika logo, Tim. Looks like close to 100% cotton. I'm very selective, but it's definately one of those shirts which I would wear. Где такую достать? ;)
One point was a good choice, it give a lot of freedom in building your character, also allow you have to make a character with all the spells
The only issue with the system in Arcanum is the technology tree, point for schematics is just not worth it
I actually really like 1 point system. It's really fun
Progressive cost for skills and attributes is a design which leads to a situations when player levels up but cannot spent any points. It’s reduce player reward for progressing in the game.
The time limit for delivering the water chip is sadly present in the classic GOG version I played recently. Was it really ever completely patched out in any version? I too disliked the time limit, because I also felt rushed. It seemed like an disincentive to exploring the world. Thank you for all the stories you share here, this is the sole baking channel I watch.
As someone who explores everything , I hate having to rush the main quest
I like arcanum's one point system. It gives you a lot of flexibility in character design.
I would consider the bigger issues the whole gnomes half orge's quest and how rarely enemies seem to use spells.
Literally the best quest in the game. There are no issues with it. It fits the world perfectly. I do agree with the enemies not using spells though.
It really doesn't give you flexibility. Tim's tiered system would allow you to spend points across multiple stats/skills. Currently you min/max by specialising in just 2-3 for the best results. The game is not that hard, so you still can play mostly as you want, and this is why it feels flexible.
@@endlessstrata6988 the ending of the half orc quest is an utter farce. By late game you're the most powerful active entity in the world and the game is just like na bro you can't do anything, I don't care that you know literally every powerful person and can Rolfstomp armies. It undermines the whole theme of having an impact on a breathing world.