@@CainOnGames For a second I thought you meant the you experienced the opposite. "This is not at all what I asked for.... but I LOVE IT!" Wonder how often that has happened.
Funny story, my first play through of Fallout 1 I tagged energy weapons. My character sucked at fighting so I worked my way around the game struggling as I realized I wasn't getting energy weapons. I had to learn a lot of strategy to survive and I went all in on the role play. It made sense my guy understood futuristic stuff because he lived in the vault his whole life. When I finally got an energy weapon I was like "Now you're all in big BIG trouble" the final act was such a breeze by comparison and I loved it.
Tim posting at the same time almost every day is just a reminder to me on how consistency is a super power. And I imagine someone like Tim might not even notice how consistent he is and how much of a super power it is, but it really is one. Consistency, not big ideas or visions, is how you ship new games. Thousands of games that could be amazing simply don’t exist because the people working on it burnt out pushing too hard on a short timeline, or just not putting a little time every day. If you try to run up a mountain, you might find yourself half way up exhausted, starving, and thirsty. But take a pack with supplies, and put one step in front of the other, you might after a while feel like you’ll never get to the top. But after a long while, one foot in front of the other, suddenly you’ll look up from the peak of the mountain at a new vista.
Just wanted to say thanks for videos like these. Not only entertaining and educational, but also helps get some of us back on track. These types of videos remind me of the reasons I love games and game development.
It's funny to listen to the discussion of Energy Weapons in Fallout 1. Pretty much every time I played I tagged all 3 gun types. I knew I wasn't going to get Energy Weapons until later, but I wanted to be ready for them when I got them.
I met your nephew a few years ago. I don’t remember his name unfortunately. We car pooled together from Rexburg, ID to get to Salt Lake City. He was going to school in Rexburg. We were talking about our hobbies and I mentioned I was a bit of a gamer. He told me he had an uncle that worked in the industry. Once he told me your name I was like 🤯 I asked him.. “Do you know how influential your uncle is? He created freakin FALLOUT! My favourite game series of all time!”. He obviously was aware lol. I definitely was being a fan boy to you through him lol. I was so stoked though! We talked about games almost the entire ride and he mentioned some projects he was working on. Really nice kid. I was watching this video and was reminded of that story. Love your content and thank you for the amazing games you have created. I’ve deeply enjoyed all of them.
Hi Tim! I just wanted to say that your videos have been wonderful, and I hope you never stop posting your thoughts and ideas. You've given me a broader and more thorough view of Video Games and media consumption in general. I wish that you never run out of stories to tell.
The skillpoint issue actually happened to me this weekend. I'm playing Enshrouded as a mage, and after 6 hours I was presented with a branch in the skill tree. Each branch was dedicated to a specific type of magic, like Ice, Fire, Thunder etc. Yet at the time I had only encountered Ice magic, it would take me another 12 hours to get fire, and I still haven't found any of the rest. At which I just picked Fire to be able to progress in the skill tree, which I had held off from doing for the past 12 hours. Luckily they atleast have a bandaid for this since you can re-spec your character. But still, I didn't do that since those features have a tendency to get exponentially more expensive. So I was at an active disadvantage for quite a long time. I even started using melee weapons to dish out more damage since I was falling so far behind with my magic damage.
Because of how poweful they are, I absolutely love that energy weapons only appear late in game. Makes the early investment so satisfying- and if you haven't put anything in there yet, it works really well as a late game goal
I notice that through your games like Fallout to Arcanum you implemented the initial store menu with starting gold so that you buy weaponry that suits your character skills, a very good work around towards ensuring your skills are valid to the beginning.
Thank for your amazing insights as always. Sharing all of this is so amazing and a true testiment to your love for your work and the community. THANK YOU!!
Fallout 2 have thought about it, we can tag energy weapons (along with science) but we lived in primitive village all our life. There is the reason for lack of such weapon! Although that game could use tagging skills later in game rather than at the start.
Arroyo does trading with local towns. there's definitely a reason for weapons to be in arroyo. Obviously with laser weaponry being a late game weapon, it would be hard to balance that, which you could potentially fix with just putting everything in small guns, and then have some interesting gameplay mechanic open up when you spec into science, or introducing more rudamentary laser weapons
It might have been in one of the fan patches (Fixt or Et Tu), but it you tagged Energy Weapons, the corpse at the beginning has a laser pistol instead of a 10mm. I just got reminded of this during the intro of this video. A neat balance solution, I thought. Edit correction: It's the player's loot that changes, not the corpse's. The player will still start with the 10mm, but if Energy Weapons is tagged, you'll also get a Laser Pistol. This is only in Fallout Fixt, not in Et Tu.
@@fredrik3880 Ah, yes. Sorry. And I took the time to test it: It's in Fallout Fixt. You still start with the 10mm if you tag Energy Weapons, but you also get a Laser Pistol. The loot on the corpse doesn't change. My bad.
I was going to comment that I don't like most of Tim's solutions to this problem, but honestly this might be one of the best ones. If they want to tag a late game weapon then give them a basic version of it, but keep the ammo limited, so they can BLAST a few people, but only a few.
@@kaptenteo hey it is fine mate. I have just played Fallout 1 many times and so just said that i remember that about the corpse. Guessing we are a lot of Fallout lovers here.
Hey Tim, ive been really enjoying the videos, i know youve talked about your favorite book and your favorite modern rpgs, but ive been interested in what other media or art (tv shows/movies/music etc.) that you enjoy, whether they were used as inspiration or not. Thanks for the many games and videos, you are an inspiration
Hey Tim, on the topic of design documents I had question about the use of overarching design documents vs multiple design documents relative to the size of a project. There's a lot of buzz right now on the internet about having a central design document that covers everything briefly versus having individual DDs for specific aspects of a game and having the game itself 'be the coalescing central design document' so to say. Some have also argued that internal game wikis have supplanted the need for DDs. My understanding is that singular design documents are no longer industry practice due to scale, but it would be surprising to me if AAA RPGs didn't have a central document and only had separate ones for individual game elements like factions, the main story, characters etc. that aren't coalesced together. What are your thoughts on this debate?
Right. Due to the hurried/reactive nature of today's game market and industry, a singular game design bible isn't used anymore. It's now more common to have feature docs which can be linked together, in something closer to a wiki.
As someone in another design industry, I really love your videos for giving me alternate ways to consider my own design considerations. You've mentioned your love of D&D, but are there other tabletop RPGs that you think would make great video games that haven't been touched on? What are your favorite tabletop RPGs?
To be honest, I just thought that was on purpose and that you could slowly invest in energy wrapons over time because its lost tech thats rare. While that might be considered not balaned mechanically, I completely bought into it because it made complete sense in the world you created.
This video made me realize that Fallout 4 created two very elegant solutions to the energy weapon skill problem, however the game just removed the energy weapon skill which made it all kinda meaningless. Having the laser musket be a thing created a believable way to have an early game energy weapon which appears in a location any new player will visit and can be modified to suit their style of play. And having the 'Science!' perk you need to upgrade energy weapons require a fairly high level and intelligence meant it couldn't get tagged at the start.
Some gamers and designers would not consider a skill being unusable for the first two thirds of three game a flaw in design. I've seen this described as Ivory Tower design, or knowledge-based games. The thought process is that a player that recognizes trap options or learns about them through trial and error should have an easier time than someone that doesn't. It's undeniable that the industry as a whole has moved away from this philosophy and towards an effort to make most builds at least viable, or a respec relatively painless, but we still see the occasional game bucking this trend and doing very well. That may be an interesting topic for a separate video.
I think another part of the "confirm it" step is verify that it is actually a problem. Confirming that it is indeed happening I'd argue is even less of an issue than verifying it is a problem. After all, if players feel like it's a problem, that's often enough to indicate that there is some sort of problem because player expectations are not being met. In the example of a vendor not having an item each time a player approaches it, but only because they have a 33% drop rate, sure the player's assumption that the shop keeper never has the item isn't correct, but maybe the rarity is too high? That's where verifying that it is indeed a problem comes in. Perhaps it's just a semantic thing, but I believe the distinction is important. In this situation maybe it is deemed not to be a problem because this rarity is a factor in what makes this particular item feel valuable. However maybe there are other situations that due to the interconnectedness of game features, there was an unanticipated outcome of two different systems interacting. If you've noticed and and you confirmed that it is indeed happening, you still need to look at it and verify that it is a problem. Maybe this unanticipated outcome is creating an exploit that player's are enjoying and it doesn't hamper any of the other systems. Maybe it does. So perhaps "verifying that it is a problem" may be a better framing of step 3 than "confirm that it's happening."
reminds me of the hunting rifle in the bathroom in vault 15, everyone finds the 10mm smg very few people find the rifle, it doesn't help that the toilet is mostly blocking it and it's in the corner so the edge of the room is blocking view of the bathroom but it is there and it's a great option for early on.
Hey tim! Im a big fan and really enjoy your videos and especially the fallout ones :)), but i want to know more about fallout online, i just recently just found about it and saw a teaser video where the table says “the master lives” and saw that the original team was going to make it so i was wondering if u know anything about it and apologies if u had made a video about it :(.
We always thought having Big Weapon and Energy Weapons tags were investing in the game being easier later, than being easier earlier. But it does only come with player experience. Tons of early RPGs had this problem is "here's a WALL of options rivalling Microsoft Excel" and the biggest problem is that some of those options are useful in like 1 (or sometimes ZERO due to a bug) situations, whereas others are massively useful, and you basically have to start the game, play for 3 hours, and restart the game so you know the "feel" of the game and what traits are actually useful. An obvious one many RPGs is allowing stealing, but there's nothing of value above "food and basic bucklers" to steal in the entire game. Also per telemetry: Heck yeah. I remember a long Bungie behind-the-scenes documentary where they record the entire playthrough of testers (and maybe even their faces so you can gauge their reactions). They noticed so many paths through maps where designers thought the answer was obvious, and testers were completely confused, and they could see on graphs the exact path they took and how many times they got turned around. Also three cheers for: Sometimes we think there's a problem, but before we start solving it, have we asked, is it a real problem? That's a hugely missing part of many people's mental models for looking at the world. "Just because you think there's a problem, and you're motivated to act, doesn't mean that 1) it exists, and 2) your solution will solve it just because you're putting effort in." I've also played games where you can tell the first level had the most testing (because that's what you played on the demo/PR/reviews), and every level after that got glitcher and less polished. As always, love the blogs, Tim --Chris
A bit like vtmb, where every stat was governed by a skill and an attribute. You can raise an attribute not fearing about the wrong choice, since it will also be useful for something else.
There is a vendor that has energy weapons in Fallout 1 early. Jacob in the hub. I still the example in the video still works. It also happen pretty often (with high luck) you get the alien blaster early.
Perhaps it would be more benificial if you have everything thats available in the local shops at each level at first. Then start to remove things and code the chance of them being there. This way you can be sure that the players getting what they need and that the play test for the specific weapons work out for different character types.
Tim, you made a video about giving good feedback, and a few videos about types of design problems and how to fix them, but I'm wondering how you go about finding the source of design problems based on a large amount of vague or unspecific feedback coming from many different playtesters, focus groups, or average Joe players? Said another way, how do you figure out what to do when nobody can put their finger on 'it'?
I'm pretty sure the answer is telemetry data and playtesting (both internal and external). You can generate reports based on the data if you know what to look for. I imagine that a lot of the reports comes from player feedback and past experience. Also, if you're the designer on a game you know what features went into it so you'll have an idea of what you want tracked.
@@Algorhythmic I appreciate the answer, but I feel it lacks exactly what this video did. He mentioned telemetry and log checking first, and presupposes a process by which you're assessing playtest data. I think this is harder to do than it seems on first glance, unless prompted by specific feedback. You can take inventory of your various features and look for expected or unexpected behavior/performance, but you can do so and be satisfied that everything is performing correctly while still receiving feedback that the experience is overall 'missing something'. The point is that when presented with this kind of information from many sources, how the hell do you even begin to tease out an answer?
@@GypsumGeneration Fair. Tim talked about telemetry in another video but I don't remember if he went into much detail. It's going to be pretty specific to whatever game you're working on. In larger studios they probably have at least one or two data specialists who can likely gather the data for you. I've done data analysis for non game companies and making inferences based off what Tim has said in a few other videos.
Ironically because of energy weapons being available later in the game, I specced small guns, speech and energy weapons - and went straight stealing the hunting rifle from the guards in Shady Sands and then killed the Mutant guard at the military base. After that I started playing the game.^^ So to say, concerning game design: There were a lot of "useless" skills in Fallout, honestly: almost all of them, especially if you knew your way around. Or simply: shopping The Hub library.
I love that design problems have multiple potential fixes and some may lead to more issues. 😄 I could see this being "fixed" by removing energy weapons entirely and merging with the other weapon skills (melee, small or big guns). Or like you said, have specialization under each category. Starting with a laser pistol is fine but you potentially run into the same issue if you're using the same weapon for 2/3 of the game. Or just leave it "broken" and hope it's not a large aspect of player frustration. Some player frustration isn't necessarily bad.
Hi Tim, love the channel. Apologies in advance if this is a sensitive topic, but are you able to provide any insight around the mass layoffs that have been occurring over the past year or your experience from running Troika. From an outsiders perspective it doesnt always make sense as many of these companies are making record profits. Is there something these companies are forseeing that the general public can't see? Is there far less demand for game devs than anticipated? Is it the rising costs of game development or is it as simple as corporate greed?
It's not so simple a phenemenon to analyze as we might think, imo. Polygon ran an article about it titled 'Video game company layoffs are creating an industry crisis'. I think they have that backward. It's an industry crisis that is driving game company layoffs and, like all our other crises, the gaming industry crisis is primarily the result of self-inflicted wounds as I see it. Tim's experience with Troika was gained in a completely different business atmosphere and environment than that in which studios find themselves operating today, enduring market forces utterly beyond their control as best they can if they can. A Covid-driven surge in video game sales; baffling and illogical business decisions (Unity, Embracer); mergers and acquisitions resulting in "overlap" and redunancy in formerly separate companies and departments; live service momentum faltering with live service games still in development; etc. I've heard of the impact of all the drivers listed and suspect there are a plethora of others that are seemingly unconnected, but must be in some way. None of it is happening in a vacuum. Those working in the tech industry at large have been hard hit as well. If Tim can offer any more insights into it than anyone else, I'd be sorely amazed.
I dislike most of the ways Fallout 4 dealt with the energy weapons situation, by giving you access to a LOT of large and energy weapons first thing, it ruined the sense of progression. However, I did actually like the laser musket. They gave you an energy weapon that was a bit dorky, and didn't fit into every situation, but it worked and could level with you for a while. I was going to say that I don't think it's a problem worth solving AT ALL, the first few times I played through Fallout 4 I noticed it, said "oh, that makes a lot of sense" and it didn't cause me any big issues. In fact, my second playthrough I put a few points into energy weapons every level, then I picked it up as a tag skill when you get an extra tag as a perk, and found that was a really effective strategy for late game weapons. But then someone mentioned a mod that if you tag energy weapons you start the game with a laser pistol and a minimum amount of ammo, and I think that's a good way to handle it. Now they've got a powerful, late game weapon, but it's not TOO powerful, and they can't overuse it.
I would like to hear your perspective on the new fallouts from new vegas to 76 and what you like about each and what you would have done differently about each? I know you didn’t work on the newer ones but I’d like to hear what the father of fallout thinks.
I can imagine playtesters having bias can be harmful as well. Usually when games go through big shifts in meta, older players dislike change and have issues shifting.
I mean you get the cattle prod and I believe a laser pistol(?) during the end of the water chip quest so I didn't think it was too bad of an issue TBH.
I'll be honest, I always thought the late drop of energy weapons in Fallout was a deliberate design and story consistent. You know about energy weapons from the vault and it takes a long time to find one on the wastes. Neat to see this was not the original intent.
Playing FO1 late (this century), I knew energy weapons would be unavailable until late game, and assumed this was a deliberate tradeoff, implying that energy weapons would be uber powerful when they arrived, justifying having an unused Tag for 2/3rds of the game.
Morning Tim. Careers question please for my teenage daughter. She is good at art and her IT teacher says she is good at IT. Would you agree that studying IT will help her get a career in digital art (possibly in the game industry, maybe elsewhere)? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer her.
It depends on where she wants to end up. AAA developers seem to prefer specialists so focusing on one thing is beneficial. Indie developers may be more interested in generalists. Also, it depends on what she wants to do. If she wants to be a game/level designer then both programming and art will be useful. There's also the potential to learn some of that on the job but I've heard larger developers may want you to stay in your lane, depends on the company I guess.
IT in terms of support, mgmt, using, or making software? And what "family" of art? If we're talking about choosing a college major, an arts program is very much geared on honing your skill in that discipline. Depending on the dept, they might be quite forward-looking and tech-savvy, and there are some solid programs that will mix traditional rigor with building your professional portfolio & finding your artistic "voice". Going the solo freelancer route is hard, but depending where you live, local CoL, staff & long-term contract opportunities for visual artists, studio musicians, actors, etc exist.
IT is a mixed-bag, and depends a lot on the quality of the program, and what your daughter is interested in & good-at. A good program will give a broad base of fundamentals in both theoretical comp sci & practical modern techniques. Should have chances to learn programming, maybe basic hardware, but also build up communication skills (writing & talking to users is key!), as well as plenty of both solo & group-projects. Ideally, she'll want to get some internships and/or career exposure to various sorts of job functions. Oddly, I think the arts teams are more pragmatic about this, although there are good/bad in both areas. If she has interest in design (visual, sound, tactile) in combo with a technical background, and maybe some psych, that's a good basis for a career in UI/UX, product design, even architecture and marketing. But recruiters & career coaches are not that imaginative, so if she wants to blend art & tech interests, she'll have to be very proactive & willing to carve out a less well-trod path. I've got 25+ yrs in software dev, and a Masters in both Fine Arts & Comp Sci, so I'm just the weirdo to ask 😅
Hey Tim, have you ever tried out any mechanics that are self-fulfilling? Meaning like in this case making energy weapons show up more based on the fact that the player has put points into that skill
Hmm. That makes the choice a no-consequences choice, which makes it a non choice. It's the approach FO4 takes - you can be melee or ranged or stealth or unarmed or a tank and it doesn't matter. They prioritise stylistic choice. Not saying it's bad but it's different.
@@gilgamecha True, it relies heavily on the player not knowing it's apart of the system, which could be true for most first playthroughs, but definitely gets strange from there
Good sir, are you suggesting, that maxing our Swimming in Dues Ex first was not the OPTIMAL build choice? I can't beleive the developers would allow me to do this!
Hi, Tim! I'm curious to know what makes the original Fallout better looking than Fallout 2? Every time I play and compare the two, the first one always looks more sharp and crisp/clear. What gives? Why is the first one so good looking?
4:00 (1/3)^5 is very small but that is not the correct application. P(5 attempts never once seeing a 1/3 chance occur)= (1-1/3)^5 = (2/3)^5 = 0.13. Which true enough isn't that rare.
There is a plasma pistol in Necropolis underground though, so the first energy weapon actually comes with the first super mutants, giving the energy weapons guy a good fighting chance. You can get up to this point in game even with your basic skills in other combat areas, because you can always avoid fights or shoot some guns with luck even if your chance to hit is low. I actually played a characteer whose only tagged and raised combat skill was energy weapons and I got to Necropolis just fine and grabbed the gun.
A great recent example is Starfield's issues with transportation and exploration. Based on what they've said in interviews, they absolutely intended the game to play this way, and didn't realize how boring and tedious visiting planets becomes after just a couple dozen hours, if that. Now they have to go back and figure out where their core mechanics went wrong and how to fix them in a balanced manner. They were able to clean up Fo76 (which had its own bundle of design missteps) decently enough, so it's my hope that they will with Starfield.
It's important to note also that with the energy weapons example there is also a need for re-balancing the game. If you start adding energy weapons to the early game without accounting for the fact that enemies have no counter to them, you risk making that skill too OP and almost mandatory.
You can also end up with a problem where energy weapons drop in the early game, but there's none or very little ammo for them. That's why test plans are so important.
Hey Tim, I really like how your videos applies to project management in general (I am not in the game industry and find your content very useful, as well as entertaining). Another question for you: what are some innovative trends in the gaming industry that you are most exicted about? I know you talked about procedurally generated content etc, but it would be great if you could further explore the topic of innovation. Bonus points if you can point out new/innovative processes.
Hi Tim! Could you talk about the technical aspect of scripting dialogs and game events? What I mean is a system design that tracks if a dialogue line is available or a certain event has been triggered. How NPCs and world interact with it ? How is this tested given the fact that player can do something in the beginning and see the result much later in the game?
One of my first runs in Fallout (maybe the first) i got the alien blaster very early and i saw how strong it was and so even though i had not tagged energy weapons i started putting points into and using it, had a blast (pun intended).
G'day Tim, interested after watching this if you could share what is the most interesting thing you discovered through telemetry that surprised you or the team. In a way, I think telemetry is as bad for game devs as focus groups are, I say that as not a dev but as an outsider. It just seems to make all games very samey and less unique since it started being used.
I kind of liked the Energy guns in early Fallout. You had to either invest in the skills useful right now, or in the skills which you will need in the future, which is in interesting strategic consideration, I would argue. My problem was actually that small guns could scale pretty well, especially in Fallout 2 and its Gauss Rifle, so investing in either Big or Energy Guns was not really necessary.
"This is what I asked for, but it's not what I wanted." Software development in a nutshell. 😂
I’ve been on both ends of that statement. I’ve said it as a designer, and I’ve heard it as a programmer.
@@CainOnGames For a second I thought you meant the you experienced the opposite. "This is not at all what I asked for.... but I LOVE IT!"
Wonder how often that has happened.
This is why being both the designer AND the programmer is awesome!
The fact that such high quality masterclasses are available daily and for free is mind-blowing for me
Indeed!
and he does them in one take, sucha master
Funny story, my first play through of Fallout 1 I tagged energy weapons. My character sucked at fighting so I worked my way around the game struggling as I realized I wasn't getting energy weapons. I had to learn a lot of strategy to survive and I went all in on the role play. It made sense my guy understood futuristic stuff because he lived in the vault his whole life.
When I finally got an energy weapon I was like "Now you're all in big BIG trouble" the final act was such a breeze by comparison and I loved it.
Very cool roleplaying story.
Tim posting at the same time almost every day is just a reminder to me on how consistency is a super power. And I imagine someone like Tim might not even notice how consistent he is and how much of a super power it is, but it really is one. Consistency, not big ideas or visions, is how you ship new games. Thousands of games that could be amazing simply don’t exist because the people working on it burnt out pushing too hard on a short timeline, or just not putting a little time every day.
If you try to run up a mountain, you might find yourself half way up exhausted, starving, and thirsty. But take a pack with supplies, and put one step in front of the other, you might after a while feel like you’ll never get to the top. But after a long while, one foot in front of the other, suddenly you’ll look up from the peak of the mountain at a new vista.
Some of the hardest decisions come from actually knowing "what you want" and then communicating that desire.
🥳 Woo a Tim Cain video on my birthday🎂
happy birthday
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday
happy bday!!
Thanks all for the birthday wishes
Just wanted to say thanks for videos like these. Not only entertaining and educational, but also helps get some of us back on track. These types of videos remind me of the reasons I love games and game development.
It's funny to listen to the discussion of Energy Weapons in Fallout 1. Pretty much every time I played I tagged all 3 gun types. I knew I wasn't going to get Energy Weapons until later, but I wanted to be ready for them when I got them.
Good morning, Tim.
I met your nephew a few years ago. I don’t remember his name unfortunately. We car pooled together from Rexburg, ID to get to Salt Lake City. He was going to school in Rexburg. We were talking about our hobbies and I mentioned I was a bit of a gamer. He told me he had an uncle that worked in the industry. Once he told me your name I was like 🤯
I asked him.. “Do you know how influential your uncle is? He created freakin FALLOUT! My favourite game series of all time!”. He obviously was aware lol. I definitely was being a fan boy to you through him lol.
I was so stoked though! We talked about games almost the entire ride and he mentioned some projects he was working on. Really nice kid.
I was watching this video and was reminded of that story. Love your content and thank you for the amazing games you have created. I’ve deeply enjoyed all of them.
Hi Tim! I just wanted to say that your videos have been wonderful, and I hope you never stop posting your thoughts and ideas. You've given me a broader and more thorough view of Video Games and media consumption in general. I wish that you never run out of stories to tell.
The skillpoint issue actually happened to me this weekend.
I'm playing Enshrouded as a mage, and after 6 hours I was presented with a branch in the skill tree. Each branch was dedicated to a specific type of magic, like Ice, Fire, Thunder etc. Yet at the time I had only encountered Ice magic, it would take me another 12 hours to get fire, and I still haven't found any of the rest. At which I just picked Fire to be able to progress in the skill tree, which I had held off from doing for the past 12 hours.
Luckily they atleast have a bandaid for this since you can re-spec your character. But still, I didn't do that since those features have a tendency to get exponentially more expensive. So I was at an active disadvantage for quite a long time. I even started using melee weapons to dish out more damage since I was falling so far behind with my magic damage.
Because of how poweful they are, I absolutely love that energy weapons only appear late in game. Makes the early investment so satisfying- and if you haven't put anything in there yet, it works really well as a late game goal
I notice that through your games like Fallout to Arcanum you implemented the initial store menu with starting gold so that you buy weaponry that suits your character skills, a very good work around towards ensuring your skills are valid to the beginning.
Well that was fascinating. Interesting to know about that specific problem as well related to Fallout.
Thank for your amazing insights as always. Sharing all of this is so amazing and a true testiment to your love for your work and the community. THANK YOU!!
Thanks Tim. Really appreciate the behind the scenes look at the industry that provides us with so many different things.
Fallout 2 have thought about it, we can tag energy weapons (along with science) but we lived in primitive village all our life. There is the reason for lack of such weapon!
Although that game could use tagging skills later in game rather than at the start.
Arroyo does trading with local towns. there's definitely a reason for weapons to be in arroyo. Obviously with laser weaponry being a late game weapon, it would be hard to balance that, which you could potentially fix with just putting everything in small guns, and then have some interesting gameplay mechanic open up when you spec into science, or introducing more rudamentary laser weapons
@@vaengr2695, like in Fallout 4😏
_Großartige Folge, vielen lieben Dank_ 🤗👍
*Great episode, thank you very much.*
I liked how the energy weapons availability worked on Fallout.
I felt like it's a good, gained knowledge, for my second and later plays.
So awesome, love would love more Design Videos from you
It might have been in one of the fan patches (Fixt or Et Tu), but it you tagged Energy Weapons, the corpse at the beginning has a laser pistol instead of a 10mm. I just got reminded of this during the intro of this video. A neat balance solution, I thought.
Edit correction: It's the player's loot that changes, not the corpse's. The player will still start with the 10mm, but if Energy Weapons is tagged, you'll also get a Laser Pistol. This is only in Fallout Fixt, not in Et Tu.
The corpse doesnt have a 10mm. It has ammo for the 10mm. You start with the 10mm however.
@@fredrik3880 Ah, yes. Sorry. And I took the time to test it: It's in Fallout Fixt. You still start with the 10mm if you tag Energy Weapons, but you also get a Laser Pistol. The loot on the corpse doesn't change. My bad.
I was going to comment that I don't like most of Tim's solutions to this problem, but honestly this might be one of the best ones. If they want to tag a late game weapon then give them a basic version of it, but keep the ammo limited, so they can BLAST a few people, but only a few.
@@kaptenteo hey it is fine mate. I have just played Fallout 1 many times and so just said that i remember that about the corpse. Guessing we are a lot of Fallout lovers here.
Hey Tim, ive been really enjoying the videos, i know youve talked about your favorite book and your favorite modern rpgs, but ive been interested in what other media or art (tv shows/movies/music etc.) that you enjoy, whether they were used as inspiration or not.
Thanks for the many games and videos, you are an inspiration
Thanks, Tim! I definitely gonna use this for my game and make a video about it!
Hey Tim, on the topic of design documents I had question about the use of overarching design documents vs multiple design documents relative to the size of a project. There's a lot of buzz right now on the internet about having a central design document that covers everything briefly versus having individual DDs for specific aspects of a game and having the game itself 'be the coalescing central design document' so to say. Some have also argued that internal game wikis have supplanted the need for DDs.
My understanding is that singular design documents are no longer industry practice due to scale, but it would be surprising to me if AAA RPGs didn't have a central document and only had separate ones for individual game elements like factions, the main story, characters etc. that aren't coalesced together. What are your thoughts on this debate?
Right. Due to the hurried/reactive nature of today's game market and industry, a singular game design bible isn't used anymore. It's now more common to have feature docs which can be linked together, in something closer to a wiki.
As someone in another design industry, I really love your videos for giving me alternate ways to consider my own design considerations.
You've mentioned your love of D&D, but are there other tabletop RPGs that you think would make great video games that haven't been touched on?
What are your favorite tabletop RPGs?
To be honest, I just thought that was on purpose and that you could slowly invest in energy wrapons over time because its lost tech thats rare. While that might be considered not balaned mechanically, I completely bought into it because it made complete sense in the world you created.
All of my designs are perfect. It's the players and critics who are wrong and not using my designs in the optimal way.
It's all part of the design.
This video made me realize that Fallout 4 created two very elegant solutions to the energy weapon skill problem, however the game just removed the energy weapon skill which made it all kinda meaningless.
Having the laser musket be a thing created a believable way to have an early game energy weapon which appears in a location any new player will visit and can be modified to suit their style of play.
And having the 'Science!' perk you need to upgrade energy weapons require a fairly high level and intelligence meant it couldn't get tagged at the start.
Some gamers and designers would not consider a skill being unusable for the first two thirds of three game a flaw in design. I've seen this described as Ivory Tower design, or knowledge-based games. The thought process is that a player that recognizes trap options or learns about them through trial and error should have an easier time than someone that doesn't. It's undeniable that the industry as a whole has moved away from this philosophy and towards an effort to make most builds at least viable, or a respec relatively painless, but we still see the occasional game bucking this trend and doing very well. That may be an interesting topic for a separate video.
I think another part of the "confirm it" step is verify that it is actually a problem. Confirming that it is indeed happening I'd argue is even less of an issue than verifying it is a problem. After all, if players feel like it's a problem, that's often enough to indicate that there is some sort of problem because player expectations are not being met. In the example of a vendor not having an item each time a player approaches it, but only because they have a 33% drop rate, sure the player's assumption that the shop keeper never has the item isn't correct, but maybe the rarity is too high?
That's where verifying that it is indeed a problem comes in. Perhaps it's just a semantic thing, but I believe the distinction is important. In this situation maybe it is deemed not to be a problem because this rarity is a factor in what makes this particular item feel valuable. However maybe there are other situations that due to the interconnectedness of game features, there was an unanticipated outcome of two different systems interacting. If you've noticed and and you confirmed that it is indeed happening, you still need to look at it and verify that it is a problem. Maybe this unanticipated outcome is creating an exploit that player's are enjoying and it doesn't hamper any of the other systems. Maybe it does. So perhaps "verifying that it is a problem" may be a better framing of step 3 than "confirm that it's happening."
reminds me of the hunting rifle in the bathroom in vault 15, everyone finds the 10mm smg very few people find the rifle, it doesn't help that the toilet is mostly blocking it and it's in the corner so the edge of the room is blocking view of the bathroom but it is there and it's a great option for early on.
Hey tim! Im a big fan and really enjoy your videos and especially the fallout ones :)), but i want to know more about fallout online, i just recently just found about it and saw a teaser video where the table says “the master lives” and saw that the original team was going to make it so i was wondering if u know anything about it and apologies if u had made a video about it :(.
We always thought having Big Weapon and Energy Weapons tags were investing in the game being easier later, than being easier earlier. But it does only come with player experience. Tons of early RPGs had this problem is "here's a WALL of options rivalling Microsoft Excel" and the biggest problem is that some of those options are useful in like 1 (or sometimes ZERO due to a bug) situations, whereas others are massively useful, and you basically have to start the game, play for 3 hours, and restart the game so you know the "feel" of the game and what traits are actually useful. An obvious one many RPGs is allowing stealing, but there's nothing of value above "food and basic bucklers" to steal in the entire game.
Also per telemetry: Heck yeah. I remember a long Bungie behind-the-scenes documentary where they record the entire playthrough of testers (and maybe even their faces so you can gauge their reactions). They noticed so many paths through maps where designers thought the answer was obvious, and testers were completely confused, and they could see on graphs the exact path they took and how many times they got turned around.
Also three cheers for: Sometimes we think there's a problem, but before we start solving it, have we asked, is it a real problem? That's a hugely missing part of many people's mental models for looking at the world. "Just because you think there's a problem, and you're motivated to act, doesn't mean that 1) it exists, and 2) your solution will solve it just because you're putting effort in."
I've also played games where you can tell the first level had the most testing (because that's what you played on the demo/PR/reviews), and every level after that got glitcher and less polished.
As always, love the blogs, Tim
--Chris
A bit like vtmb, where every stat was governed by a skill and an attribute. You can raise an attribute not fearing about the wrong choice, since it will also be useful for something else.
There is a vendor that has energy weapons in Fallout 1 early. Jacob in the hub. I still the example in the video still works.
It also happen pretty often (with high luck) you get the alien blaster early.
Perhaps it would be more benificial if you have everything thats available in the local shops at each level at first. Then start to remove things and code the chance of them being there. This way you can be sure that the players getting what they need and that the play test for the specific weapons work out for different character types.
Tim, you made a video about giving good feedback, and a few videos about types of design problems and how to fix them, but I'm wondering how you go about finding the source of design problems based on a large amount of vague or unspecific feedback coming from many different playtesters, focus groups, or average Joe players? Said another way, how do you figure out what to do when nobody can put their finger on 'it'?
I'm pretty sure the answer is telemetry data and playtesting (both internal and external). You can generate reports based on the data if you know what to look for. I imagine that a lot of the reports comes from player feedback and past experience. Also, if you're the designer on a game you know what features went into it so you'll have an idea of what you want tracked.
@@Algorhythmic I appreciate the answer, but I feel it lacks exactly what this video did. He mentioned telemetry and log checking first, and presupposes a process by which you're assessing playtest data. I think this is harder to do than it seems on first glance, unless prompted by specific feedback. You can take inventory of your various features and look for expected or unexpected behavior/performance, but you can do so and be satisfied that everything is performing correctly while still receiving feedback that the experience is overall 'missing something'. The point is that when presented with this kind of information from many sources, how the hell do you even begin to tease out an answer?
@@GypsumGeneration Fair. Tim talked about telemetry in another video but I don't remember if he went into much detail. It's going to be pretty specific to whatever game you're working on. In larger studios they probably have at least one or two data specialists who can likely gather the data for you. I've done data analysis for non game companies and making inferences based off what Tim has said in a few other videos.
Ironically because of energy weapons being available later in the game, I specced small guns, speech and energy weapons - and went straight stealing the hunting rifle from the guards in Shady Sands and then killed the Mutant guard at the military base. After that I started playing the game.^^
So to say, concerning game design: There were a lot of "useless" skills in Fallout, honestly: almost all of them, especially if you knew your way around. Or simply: shopping The Hub library.
I love that design problems have multiple potential fixes and some may lead to more issues. 😄 I could see this being "fixed" by removing energy weapons entirely and merging with the other weapon skills (melee, small or big guns). Or like you said, have specialization under each category. Starting with a laser pistol is fine but you potentially run into the same issue if you're using the same weapon for 2/3 of the game. Or just leave it "broken" and hope it's not a large aspect of player frustration. Some player frustration isn't necessarily bad.
While I totally get it's a problem from a game design standpoint, I actually like the sense of progression energy weapons coming in late gives.
Hi Tim, love the channel. Apologies in advance if this is a sensitive topic, but are you able to provide any insight around the mass layoffs that have been occurring over the past year or your experience from running Troika.
From an outsiders perspective it doesnt always make sense as many of these companies are making record profits. Is there something these companies are forseeing that the general public can't see? Is there far less demand for game devs than anticipated? Is it the rising costs of game development or is it as simple as corporate greed?
It's not so simple a phenemenon to analyze as we might think, imo. Polygon ran an article about it titled 'Video game company layoffs are creating an industry crisis'. I think they have that backward. It's an industry crisis that is driving game company layoffs and, like all our other crises, the gaming industry crisis is primarily the result of self-inflicted wounds as I see it.
Tim's experience with Troika was gained in a completely different business atmosphere and environment than that in which studios find themselves operating today, enduring market forces utterly beyond their control as best they can if they can. A Covid-driven surge in video game sales; baffling and illogical business decisions (Unity, Embracer); mergers and acquisitions resulting in "overlap" and redunancy in formerly separate companies and departments; live service momentum faltering with live service games still in development; etc. I've heard of the impact of all the drivers listed and suspect there are a plethora of others that are seemingly unconnected, but must be in some way. None of it is happening in a vacuum. Those working in the tech industry at large have been hard hit as well. If Tim can offer any more insights into it than anyone else, I'd be sorely amazed.
I dislike most of the ways Fallout 4 dealt with the energy weapons situation, by giving you access to a LOT of large and energy weapons first thing, it ruined the sense of progression. However, I did actually like the laser musket. They gave you an energy weapon that was a bit dorky, and didn't fit into every situation, but it worked and could level with you for a while.
I was going to say that I don't think it's a problem worth solving AT ALL, the first few times I played through Fallout 4 I noticed it, said "oh, that makes a lot of sense" and it didn't cause me any big issues. In fact, my second playthrough I put a few points into energy weapons every level, then I picked it up as a tag skill when you get an extra tag as a perk, and found that was a really effective strategy for late game weapons. But then someone mentioned a mod that if you tag energy weapons you start the game with a laser pistol and a minimum amount of ammo, and I think that's a good way to handle it. Now they've got a powerful, late game weapon, but it's not TOO powerful, and they can't overuse it.
I would like to hear your perspective on the new fallouts from new vegas to 76 and what you like about each and what you would have done differently about each? I know you didn’t work on the newer ones but I’d like to hear what the father of fallout thinks.
I can imagine playtesters having bias can be harmful as well.
Usually when games go through big shifts in meta, older players dislike change and have issues shifting.
I mean you get the cattle prod and I believe a laser pistol(?) during the end of the water chip quest so I didn't think it was too bad of an issue TBH.
I'll be honest, I always thought the late drop of energy weapons in Fallout was a deliberate design and story consistent. You know about energy weapons from the vault and it takes a long time to find one on the wastes. Neat to see this was not the original intent.
I think, it wasn't just Energy weapons, but Heavy weapons as well
Playing FO1 late (this century), I knew energy weapons would be unavailable until late game, and assumed this was a deliberate tradeoff, implying that energy weapons would be uber powerful when they arrived, justifying having an unused Tag for 2/3rds of the game.
Vault 15 was a good bottleneck to drop a laser pistol for example.
Hey Tim what microphone are you using?
What kind of wall is that over his left shoulder with all the little vertical lines?
Morning Tim. Careers question please for my teenage daughter. She is good at art and her IT teacher says she is good at IT. Would you agree that studying IT will help her get a career in digital art (possibly in the game industry, maybe elsewhere)? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer her.
It depends on where she wants to end up. AAA developers seem to prefer specialists so focusing on one thing is beneficial. Indie developers may be more interested in generalists. Also, it depends on what she wants to do. If she wants to be a game/level designer then both programming and art will be useful. There's also the potential to learn some of that on the job but I've heard larger developers may want you to stay in your lane, depends on the company I guess.
IT in terms of support, mgmt, using, or making software? And what "family" of art? If we're talking about choosing a college major, an arts program is very much geared on honing your skill in that discipline. Depending on the dept, they might be quite forward-looking and tech-savvy, and there are some solid programs that will mix traditional rigor with building your professional portfolio & finding your artistic "voice".
Going the solo freelancer route is hard, but depending where you live, local CoL, staff & long-term contract opportunities for visual artists, studio musicians, actors, etc exist.
IT is a mixed-bag, and depends a lot on the quality of the program, and what your daughter is interested in & good-at. A good program will give a broad base of fundamentals in both theoretical comp sci & practical modern techniques.
Should have chances to learn programming, maybe basic hardware, but also build up communication skills (writing & talking to users is key!), as well as plenty of both solo & group-projects.
Ideally, she'll want to get some internships and/or career exposure to various sorts of job functions. Oddly, I think the arts teams are more pragmatic about this, although there are good/bad in both areas.
If she has interest in design (visual, sound, tactile) in combo with a technical background, and maybe some psych, that's a good basis for a career in UI/UX, product design, even architecture and marketing. But recruiters & career coaches are not that imaginative, so if she wants to blend art & tech interests, she'll have to be very proactive & willing to carve out a less well-trod path.
I've got 25+ yrs in software dev, and a Masters in both Fine Arts & Comp Sci, so I'm just the weirdo to ask 😅
Hey Tim, have you ever tried out any mechanics that are self-fulfilling? Meaning like in this case making energy weapons show up more based on the fact that the player has put points into that skill
Hmm. That makes the choice a no-consequences choice, which makes it a non choice. It's the approach FO4 takes - you can be melee or ranged or stealth or unarmed or a tank and it doesn't matter. They prioritise stylistic choice. Not saying it's bad but it's different.
@@gilgamecha True, it relies heavily on the player not knowing it's apart of the system, which could be true for most first playthroughs, but definitely gets strange from there
nice mic tim!
Talking from my personal experience... number of developers in the gaming industry that doesn't really playtest their stuff scares me.
Big Guns had it worse than Energy weapons!
Good sir, are you suggesting, that maxing our Swimming in Dues Ex first was not the OPTIMAL build choice? I can't beleive the developers would allow me to do this!
Hi, Tim! I'm curious to know what makes the original Fallout better looking than Fallout 2? Every time I play and compare the two, the first one always looks more sharp and crisp/clear. What gives? Why is the first one so good looking?
Fallout 2 reuses assets from fallout, so Tim will probably not know what you're talking about.
you could be playing fallout on a higher resolution than fallout 2
4:00 (1/3)^5 is very small but that is not the correct application.
P(5 attempts never once seeing a 1/3 chance occur)= (1-1/3)^5 = (2/3)^5 = 0.13.
Which true enough isn't that rare.
There is a plasma pistol in Necropolis underground though, so the first energy weapon actually comes with the first super mutants, giving the energy weapons guy a good fighting chance. You can get up to this point in game even with your basic skills in other combat areas, because you can always avoid fights or shoot some guns with luck even if your chance to hit is low. I actually played a characteer whose only tagged and raised combat skill was energy weapons and I got to Necropolis just fine and grabbed the gun.
Hi Everyone Its me Tim
A great recent example is Starfield's issues with transportation and exploration. Based on what they've said in interviews, they absolutely intended the game to play this way, and didn't realize how boring and tedious visiting planets becomes after just a couple dozen hours, if that.
Now they have to go back and figure out where their core mechanics went wrong and how to fix them in a balanced manner. They were able to clean up Fo76 (which had its own bundle of design missteps) decently enough, so it's my hope that they will with Starfield.
It's important to note also that with the energy weapons example there is also a need for re-balancing the game. If you start adding energy weapons to the early game without accounting for the fact that enemies have no counter to them, you risk making that skill too OP and almost mandatory.
You can also end up with a problem where energy weapons drop in the early game, but there's none or very little ammo for them. That's why test plans are so important.
What you call design problems, and imbalance, I call flavor. What you call perfect design, and balance, I call soulless cash grab.
How did you learn to drive without a car?
Hey Tim, I really like how your videos applies to project management in general (I am not in the game industry and find your content very useful, as well as entertaining).
Another question for you: what are some innovative trends in the gaming industry that you are most exicted about? I know you talked about procedurally generated content etc, but it would be great if you could further explore the topic of innovation. Bonus points if you can point out new/innovative processes.
Hi Tim! Could you talk about the technical aspect of scripting dialogs and game events? What I mean is a system design that tracks if a dialogue line is available or a certain event has been triggered. How NPCs and world interact with it ? How is this tested given the fact that player can do something in the beginning and see the result much later in the game?
Have you watched:
th-cam.com/video/GYWEgQAh6So/w-d-xo.html
I deep dive into Arcanum's dialogs and how they work.
Gonna go through that right away! Thanks. @@CainOnGames
One of my first runs in Fallout (maybe the first) i got the alien blaster very early and i saw how strong it was and so even though i had not tagged energy weapons i started putting points into and using it, had a blast (pun intended).
G'day Tim, interested after watching this if you could share what is the most interesting thing you discovered through telemetry that surprised you or the team. In a way, I think telemetry is as bad for game devs as focus groups are, I say that as not a dev but as an outsider. It just seems to make all games very samey and less unique since it started being used.
"No energy weaps early" bro there's a free Plasma Pistol in the Necropolis Sewers, and about 8 shots.
I kind of liked the Energy guns in early Fallout. You had to either invest in the skills useful right now, or in the skills which you will need in the future, which is in interesting strategic consideration, I would argue. My problem was actually that small guns could scale pretty well, especially in Fallout 2 and its Gauss Rifle, so investing in either Big or Energy Guns was not really necessary.
Thank you so much for the content, Tim.
first
The problem with talented people giving advice, is that they don't actually know how they did it, and so they can only guess.