What are your thoughts on Berwyn being removed from the party?
- Thread starter UndyingRevenant
- Start date
Personally, I would say that making him a NPC was the best option. Here are my points of view:
Combat: Berwyn was the worst companion. All other companion where straight up better or had a niche they are good in. Berwyn was a jack-of-all-trades character, but the game favours specialized characters. In terms of party building, you lose basically nothing.
World interactions: Berwyn had no dedicated writer, so his interactions where fairly limited. Every companion has some extra dialog here and there. Berwyn has as well in the earlier parts of the game. But Iirc he has no additional dialog from the winter city onward. Coupled with his bad combat performance, there was barely any incentive to use him. He was a bad combat character, that was also very silent. He was kinda just a guy that is there in the background. The few times I used him for the longer dungeons, I actually forgot that he was in my party.
Game Development: 2 Problems here. First, Berwyn had no dedicated writer. He was an extra companion, another writer had to take care of. Given that the new writer is very busy, has a companion on his own and that companions are ressource intense, it is now wonder that Berwyn didn't get much attention. The second problem is Berwyns void of content. Bringing him up to par with other companions in terms of world interaction is an extreme amount of work. From a developing standpoint, it seems silly to me to reallocate ressources to a companion, that is bad in combat and lacking in interactions. You also need to fit Berwyns narrative with his character. Bringing Berwyn up to date would be almost as ressource heavy as making an entirely new companion.
My conclusion: Berwyn was simply unfinished, to a point where "fixing" him was to ressource heavy. The only reason you would use him, is personal preference. I fully understand the people who like him. But if the devs would have decided to fix him, he would hinder the progress of other projects and probably be stuck in the backlog limbo for a small eternity.
As someone who is indifferent to him, I have lost nothing at all. I rather have a elaborate NPC than a borderline useless, outdated companion, I never use anyway.
Combat: Berwyn was the worst companion. All other companion where straight up better or had a niche they are good in. Berwyn was a jack-of-all-trades character, but the game favours specialized characters. In terms of party building, you lose basically nothing.
World interactions: Berwyn had no dedicated writer, so his interactions where fairly limited. Every companion has some extra dialog here and there. Berwyn has as well in the earlier parts of the game. But Iirc he has no additional dialog from the winter city onward. Coupled with his bad combat performance, there was barely any incentive to use him. He was a bad combat character, that was also very silent. He was kinda just a guy that is there in the background. The few times I used him for the longer dungeons, I actually forgot that he was in my party.
Game Development: 2 Problems here. First, Berwyn had no dedicated writer. He was an extra companion, another writer had to take care of. Given that the new writer is very busy, has a companion on his own and that companions are ressource intense, it is now wonder that Berwyn didn't get much attention. The second problem is Berwyns void of content. Bringing him up to par with other companions in terms of world interaction is an extreme amount of work. From a developing standpoint, it seems silly to me to reallocate ressources to a companion, that is bad in combat and lacking in interactions. You also need to fit Berwyns narrative with his character. Bringing Berwyn up to date would be almost as ressource heavy as making an entirely new companion.
My conclusion: Berwyn was simply unfinished, to a point where "fixing" him was to ressource heavy. The only reason you would use him, is personal preference. I fully understand the people who like him. But if the devs would have decided to fix him, he would hinder the progress of other projects and probably be stuck in the backlog limbo for a small eternity.
As someone who is indifferent to him, I have lost nothing at all. I rather have a elaborate NPC than a borderline useless, outdated companion, I never use anyway.
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I voted don't care because long story short I never took him along as a companion except for his one quest he had at the time.
I don't want to vote Good or Don't Care, because I'm not happy a companion was removed. But I also don't want to vote Bad like I'm condemning the devs for how they resolved an orphaned companion. It's sad but I agree with Savin's decision to transition Berwyn into a content rich NPC.
Don't really care since I barely used Berry as he was one of the more useless party members imo, he died wayyyyyy before anyone else did in all fights. Much prefer Wynne and Matiha content and still patiently waiting for Viv to become part of our party.
As someone said on the patch notes comments that some of the complainers about Berry not being a companion is just complaining for the sake of complaining.. It's not like Berrys permanently vanished from the game.
As someone said on the patch notes comments that some of the complainers about Berry not being a companion is just complaining for the sake of complaining.. It's not like Berrys permanently vanished from the game.
Yeah and many of the others are honestly grasping at straws by asking if he could have just remained as he was. I get that there aren't a lot of male characters in the game and it sucks to lose one of the few male characters in the companion role but I really have to question this reasoning. They are honestly ok with him being left unfinished and incomplete? Does quality matter to these people? Do they actually know what the function of a companion is in this game? I get people loved the character and are probably grieving about losing him as a companion but don't just desperately cling on to something because there aren't too many alternatives available. I'm bisexual and I would rather him be the way he is now, for good and bad, rather than have him stuck in limbo. Making Berwyn a (mostly) complete npc was probably the best solution to an awkward situation and I hope people can just recognize that and move on at this point. I'm not trying to be harsh or insulting when I say this to anyone in that camp who's reading this, I'm just being blunt and sharing my two cents.
I voted "bad" because I like companions that can summon dudes into battle and not everyone has Brienne.
Apparently the reasoning was that it's difficult to have a character with a lot of content as a companion.
While I think that it should have been a choice (either keep him as a companion with an incomplete storyline, or complete his events and have him be an NPC with a lot of content), I never used him as a companion, so the arbitrary decision happened to be one that doesn't impact me negatively.
At the same time, this means that it wouldn't be too difficult to add a bunch of "generic" companions (as opposed to "story" companions) that would have almost no content but would be a cheap way to improve party customization, kind of like generic commanders in Sengoku Rance.
While I think that it should have been a choice (either keep him as a companion with an incomplete storyline, or complete his events and have him be an NPC with a lot of content), I never used him as a companion, so the arbitrary decision happened to be one that doesn't impact me negatively.
At the same time, this means that it wouldn't be too difficult to add a bunch of "generic" companions (as opposed to "story" companions) that would have almost no content but would be a cheap way to improve party customization, kind of like generic commanders in Sengoku Rance.
Other way around actually, all the insane mutability that B added was because they knew they weren't going to be supporting him as a companion after the quest. As Savin mentions in the blog post (and B reinforced with a comment today) the decision to remove him was made at the start of the process. The explanation for why that choice was made is also in the blog post:
So yeah, orphaned character with an unfinished plot who was (almost) exactly the kind of bubble waifu companion that they were specifically intended not to be, the amount of work that would be required to properly catch him up and then keep supporting them for the entire game was deemed too much even if you didn't add all sorts of new variables like B did. And Savin would know, considering how often he loudly castigates himself for the hubris of trying to write three companions himself.
Anyhow, zagzig's thoughts are pretty much the same as mine on the voting, so I didn't.
Yes, that's what I said... the more content a character has, the harder it is to have that character as a companion. For example, because Brint can be turned into Brienne, there has to be tons of extra content written to account for that in game events (for when you meet his family, etc). It's why content-heavy NPCs are difficult to make into companions. In contrast, a generic character with no content can be easily made into a companion, you just have to give it combat stats. Ideally, you make content-heavy NPCs and content-light companions.
As Savin mentions in the blog post (and B reinforced with a comment today) the decision to remove him was made at the start of the process. The explanation for why that choice was made is also in the blog post:
So yeah, orphaned character with an unfinished plot who was (almost) exactly the kind of bubble waifu companion that they were specifically intended not to be, the amount of work that would be required to properly catch him up and then keep supporting them for the entire game was deemed too much even if you didn't add all sorts of new variables like B did. And Savin would know, considering how often he loudly castigates himself for the hubris of trying to write three companions himself.
Anyhow, zagzig's thoughts are pretty much the same as mine on the voting, so I didn't.
Maybe it's because I don't know what's planned for the game, but I don't see anything wrong with a companion having little to no content. A companion is just someone you can have in your party, it says nothing about whether or not that character needs to have a huge amount of content written for them.
While I don't care about Berwyn being a companion (like I said, I never used him), I don't understand why it wouldn't have been possible to leave players the option of keeping him in the party instead of progressing his events and story. I don't understand why that would have burdened any writer. It would just have let people have an additional companion if they don't care about progressing his events.
There would still have been complaints about NPC-Berwyn getting content while companion-Berwyn doesn't... but fewer complaints than NPC-Berwyn getting content while companion-Berwyn gets vaporized out of existence.
So basically the decision is just inexplicable enough that it makes me wonder if I'm missing some important information here.
Yes, but the point I wasn't sure you understood is that the reason B added all those variables is because he knew Berwyn wasn't going to be supported as a companion afterwards, as opposed to dropping him because they realized after BerryQuest was written that he had too many variables to easily handle.
You might want to give the Primary Design Document and Tobs' topic on companions a look then. The entire pitch for companions is that they do have large amounts of content and integration into the story and not be bubble waifus who only interact with the Champ at the Frost Hound/camp. This is what Savin has to say in the former, including the bolding:
So yeah, we've known this since the very start and Berry unfortunately wound up becoming the very thing a companion wasn't supposed to be, due to Real World Stuff. That meant something had to be done.
I agree with Zag. There needs to be a fourth option on the poll where you think it sucks but you understand the reasoning.
Ah, so it's a deliberate design choice...
That's unfortunate. It basically disallows generic combat companions. At the very least I would have created two categories for party members, story companions and generic recruit. Imagine having access to a dozen (or even infinite, procedurally-generated) additional party members, easily added because no one's forced to make any content for them! That would drastically improve the game, both mechanically and for people who want certain sexes/races in their party, with little writer investment.
Alas.
Potential for a lot of mixed answers here. For me it would be "I don't care but I don't understand the reasoning".
You want companions to be NFTs? Am I reading that right?
Imagine having to balance an additional dozen Power sets on top of all the ones that already exist or will exist, or deal with the potential nightmare of procedurally generated Power sets...
I'm not really sure that having a lump of data with no description, portrait or any interaction aside from a name and combat text would satisfy most people's desires to have a certain type of character with them on the adventure.
Also, the way the game tracks who's in your party requires that they be, y'know, characters, because the game needs something to output based on who is in the party and all of that has to be written by hand. As Balak mentions in the context of Zo, you cannot have a companion who does not speak (or do anything other than 'be there' in combat) without having to review the entire system to account for it.
So yeah, a combination of 'No, we don't want generic blob companions' and 'the code literally Does Not Work That Way'.
Apparently there's a joke here, but I don't get it.
I think, because there are so very few companions and few of them are likely to match any particular player's preferences (be it mechanically, thematically and/or sexually), the game would benefit from having a much, much wider variety of party members. The problem, of course, is that companions as they have been implemented thus far require an almost absurd amount of work.
Which is why it's highly convenient that generic party members would require very little work to implement. If no one wants to bother hand-crafting a dozen sets of combat statistics, it would be easy enough to randomly generate generic party members. Add a "Mercenaries" menu to a few locations, have a few location-appropriate randomly-generated characters hang there (the list resets once a week), voilà. You've functionally added infinite party members for about 1% of the work it would take to make a single companion.
None of that is necessary. It's much easier and much better to simply give generic characters all their class powers and let the players select which ones they have equipped.
Obviously generic characters would have simple descriptions and could easily have a generic portrait (like enemies do), but even that is completely unnecessary. Have you ever played, say, Caves of Qud? It really doesn't take much to make a character, people's minds fill in the details on their own.
Generic characters are characters. They don't have to have a particularly fancy label, who cares if they're called Random_Orc_Warrior_C internally? And nothing needs to be written by hand, they'd be like enemies are, simply stats with powers. The game is already like that. When you're out and about, even companions usually have zero interactions outside of combat and use standard generic speeches for powers.
It's all there already.
Zo is an exception because a lot of powers and commands involve generic talk. In that scenario, there would genuinely be a need to customize certain actions.
I get that developers sometimes make arbitrary choices. I'm just not sure that generic characters existing would somehow make the game worse. Players who don't like generic characters can simply opt not to use them, and those who want more party composition options and aren't satisfied with the limited companion selection can use them if they want.
I say all this and I know it's 99.99% likely not to happen. I'm just saying... it could be a thing and I see no reason why it shouldn't.
Just like I don't see why there couldn't have been an option to keep Berwyn as a companion (and simply disable his story progress while he is one). I can't imagine it would have taken much work at all to do it that way instead of nuking him.
But again, I never used him, so... meh.
I chose not to vote in this poll. I'm very new to the game, and while I did recruit Berwyn on my first play-through, I never used him as an actual companion, so I don't know exactly what I missed. I do feel that there is still a rather rich selection of companions to choose from with an interesting assortment of personalities and quirks (Ryn quickly becoming one of my favorites).
I'm with the devs on this matter. Reading over old posts and various design documents has proven in my mind what a herculean task this game is and how much dedication is required. I can attest to how difficult this can be, as some time ago I did my own erotic writing, and trying to maintain that pace until (in my case) an entire novel is done can be a daunting task, so I have some sympathy for the dev team. I think what they've come up with is fantastic, and if a sacrifice like this has to be made so the overall quality doesn't suffer, so be it.
I'm with the devs on this matter. Reading over old posts and various design documents has proven in my mind what a herculean task this game is and how much dedication is required. I can attest to how difficult this can be, as some time ago I did my own erotic writing, and trying to maintain that pace until (in my case) an entire novel is done can be a daunting task, so I have some sympathy for the dev team. I think what they've come up with is fantastic, and if a sacrifice like this has to be made so the overall quality doesn't suffer, so be it.
I'm not quite sure you understand the intricacies of how this stuff works behind the scene. It's quite the opposite that these would make balancing easier because you still have to balance all the generic classes and their movesets around the existing game's content(and vice versa for new content) in addition to the existing companions and their skillsets. You'd also have to balance random stat generation so it can't accidentally make a god companion with perfect stats across the board. It'd add so much more need for balancing unless you make them intentionally underpowered in which there's... kinda no point to use them then.
Sure you'd be removing the need to account for companion input in scenes from these generic classes(as well as player attachment opportunities and the little things companions add to content for being present) but it'd still add a lot of code shenanigans that you aren't accounting for. Hell I'm a programmer and even brainstorming all the things that addition could break probably still wouldn't ever account for all possible actual code breakage. Depending on how the parser works you can get errors. depending on how the conditionals are setup you could trigger an else statement by accident. Class structure for companions may not allow for generics to work as you suggest. Just because you can conceive the idea rather easily it doesn't necessarily mean it'll be as easy to implement. In fact it's almost exclusively not easy, especially when adding such a major component to a project that's not only not designed for that, but multiple years deep into its development cycle on said system not designed for it.
Trust me, "it shouldn't be too hard" is famous last words for a programmer. Working with the variables you have makes balance an everlasting dance as is. Adding more variables makes that dance all the more tiring to perform.
As for the poll, none of these really cover my thoughts on it so I'm not choosing an answer. Upset that it has to happen, understanding and accepting of why, appreciate and enjoy what we did get, no ill will to the devs and no hard feelings either way.
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I find it bad on principle that Berwyn fans do seem to get short end of the stick in the update. Or at least I do. I lose my favorite companion and content related to him and for that, in exchange, I get presented with the content that seems more aimed at players that were not fans of Berwyin. The majority, the one that gets pandered to most of the time. So having to share my boy without receiving any real benefit irks me.
If the expansion was just conclusion to Berry storyline and some additions to his already established niche as dominant femboy, then I would e somewhat miffled but happy. Since I understand that supporting a companion is a lot of work.
But, as it is now, I am sad.
If the expansion was just conclusion to Berry storyline and some additions to his already established niche as dominant femboy, then I would e somewhat miffled but happy. Since I understand that supporting a companion is a lot of work.
But, as it is now, I am sad.
I feel its bad, but probably unavoidable. No real good answer, just degrees of bad answers to move forward. Its a terrible place to be in for the Devs and the fans of that character. I hope some recovery of old scenes in some form can follow or failing that, new content catered to Berwyn as an NPC. I'm not really saying this as a fan of Berwyn, because I can't really consider myself one. But I can employ some empathy and want those fans to get some recompense. At the same time, I can't really say that we should expect the impossible from the devs. I havent played the newest Berwyn mission yet, but I appreciate that the devs tried for a decent send-off. There are no villains here, only victims of circumstance.
I think I left a post on how I felt on Berwyn leaving the party. but after looking on how long it toke to make get his story done, and how someone pointed out that he was a bobble character, and now looking back on it.. he was. yeah it was played off as him just being to him self. but he was not going around and being with others to help take his mind off thins. other then Cait but that was just to play off how horny he was. any ways, I felt bad for him being but as a NPC but I also felt back for B. as they has to work one someone's else's character for 15 months! (That's a Year and Three month mind you!)
I'm thankful for how his story ended. and I enjoyed having him around. yeah it still bites having him gone. but this tells us all some. Don't leave you're work undone, or it will be put to the side of thing if not remove all together.
again. thank you B for getting Berwyn story!.
I still feel bad about him no longer being in the party but hey. it is what it is!~
I'm thankful for how his story ended. and I enjoyed having him around. yeah it still bites having him gone. but this tells us all some. Don't leave you're work undone, or it will be put to the side of thing if not remove all together.
again. thank you B for getting Berwyn story!.
I still feel bad about him no longer being in the party but hey. it is what it is!~
There's actually two jokes in there. Procedural generation of characters/NFTs and the fact that NFTs are a load of bullshit...
As already mentioned, randomly generating characters will open up the possibility of either generating characters that are ass and not worth using, or characters who are stupidly overpowered. The time and effort it would take Balak to make an RNG such that randomly generated characters don't fall into either of these extremes could be spent doing literally anything else. Like writing more content for his characters, or the gameplay rebalance.
The game is not balanced around companions having free ability selection, nor does it have any mechanism to allow this. There's a reason your companions get their gear and stats in fixed sets and it takes time to come up with new ones.
I could say the same for the generic characters in, I dunno, the original Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest III. And you know what, if I wanted that sort of 'Imagine they have personalities for yourself' experience, I could play those games instead. But no, this is CoC2 where all the playable characters are actually characters.
The enemies are also written by hand. There is no magical coding fairy who waves a magic wand and turns 'I have an idea' into a functional combat encounter.
Have you, I dunno, tried wandering the Frostwood with Ryn or Cait in the party? Or the Undermountain with Brint/Brienne?
The entire way companion programming works involves checks for who is in your party and there are many calls written with the assumption that [companion1] and [companion2] are actual developed characters. Which is why Balak, who knows about this game on a level that neither of us ever will, has said that you can't just drop a mute character into the game or it will break shit and require an obscene amount of work to account for. The time spent 'customizing certain actions' could be spent writing content for, y'know, actual characters instead of Blob Lupine Warrior #31.
I voted for bad, not as a bad decision was made but that Berwyn was stuck with no good options for everybody. I enjoyed what B was able to write up and do for Berwyn into turning him into a npc, it's still bitter sweet. I enjoyed Berwyn's character even for a bratty femboy cause he wasn't just jumping for joy for me. When I brought him into my party sure yeah I didn't mind he didn't pack as much punch as others but he was still fine for me to have time to time. I understand that it would take it's toll on another writer to work on Berwyn and I wouldn't want them forced to do it either. Honestly the thing that has me most unhappy about Berwyn's fate is who is replacing him. I don't hate Viv but to me she is a bland big boobie witch, while I found the half-lupine who is a bratty femboy mage to be more fun. All I can really hope for now for Berwyn is that is probably unlikely, I hope Berwyn gets to have some more content before the team is all done with CoC2.
It wouldn't be all that hard to balance their stats so that having access to a standard power set for their class would be functional.
Again, if people want super fleshed out characters, they could use the regular companions. Those players who prefer generic could use generics. Options are good.
See how extremely rare companion interactions are outside of combat? Of all existing companions, how many make custom comments in the Frostwood or Undermountain? How many companions make custom comments in Harvest Valley? And if you don't have those companions with you, there aren't even going to be any comments at all. It's not like it's this big must-have feature, companions almost never say anything when you're out and about. There is almost no gameplay difference. Plenty of players would happily give up one comment every blue moon in exchange for a wider selection of party members.
Instead of writing a line for one single companion that you might or might not have with you, why not write a generic line that could work for any and all generic characters? Isn't that a better use of time?
Generic characters are only blobs if you don't have any imagination. Even a creatively disabled person like me can effortlessly create a personality and headcanon around a generic character. It's actually something that makes generics superior as companions are set in stone, if the game tells you something about them, it's there and you can't do anything about it. It was the same in TiTS, where instead of creating a space explorer you were stuck being a specific character (which, unless it's been added since last I played, also disabled options like playing as a synthetic being). I really didn't like that and I was glad that you could actually make your own character in CoC2.
I know it's not the direction the development team is going, but I will not accept the arguments against the idea. Generic party members would be fucking awesome. Especially for those of us who don't have anyone we like in the available selection of companions.
Though I guess there will be Vivianne at some point... I do like her.
And that says everything we need to know, right there.
As someone with a very active imagination, who creates characters in my sleep for tabletop rpg campaigns, I think this is a bad idea. Why should I have to do the leg work in coming up with the headcanon details of a character in a porn game when the game could literally just have, you know, characters already made as it does now? This is the same logic of you saying the cardboard box a game console comes in is more fun than the console itself because you can imagine anything and you aren't hemmed in by what games you have, the hardware etc. I don't understand how you think generic characters are better than those with actual creativity and effort put in to flesh them out. You may be ok with characters all saying the same shit and having blanket responses, but most of us demand a bit more quality than that. Also saying that you won't accept any arguments against the idea is just arrogant and makes you come across as kind of inflexible. I agree that options are good, but this would just be mediocre.