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Samuel Clemens posted:Grieving Mother is a Planescape: Torment companion that accidentally wandered into PoE, both in terms of presentation and the themes she represents. Good comparison, except I found characters in Torment were all either charming/funny in their own way or had a pretty deep (sometimes hidden) relevance to the overall plot. Grieving mother is .... uhh .... mysterious or something?
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Aug 19, 2016 20:54
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Inspector Gesicht posted:For God's sake the GM needs a mod to remove the sibilance from her audio-files. Her voice wreaks havoc on my tinnitus. Yeah, it's awful. I can't focus on her dialogue at all whenever it's a node that's voiced.
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Aug 19, 2016 21:02
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I can't recall her ever having a spoken line so we're joking, right? e: Granted I've only made something like two steps into her story. Here's hoping for the Bioware touch where I sex her into being okay.
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Aug 19, 2016 21:06
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I really need to go in and finish the White March, but every time I pick this game up I just get overwhelmed with frustration about how much fun I was having last time only for it to immediately come to a screeching halt based on a half-hour-delayed game-breaking bug. Does anyone know if they fixed the Ogre Aggression bug for when you make peace with the Ogre tribes (and then they kill you anyway because some of the ogres are still set to aggressive so all the others blink to aggressive as well)?
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Aug 19, 2016 21:09
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:The "mental dungeon" was supposed to be more Oh, I didn't know that. Then it's good they scraped it.
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Aug 19, 2016 21:57
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IIRC (don't really have time to check, but I think Avellone discussed this in an interview with the RPG Codex), so that wouldn't have addressed your complaint at all.
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So I just completed the final Swamp / Bog encounter with Llengrath and her dragons. It was on hard difficulty and I was expecting a bit of a challenge, but with all my maxed out guys and gear it was a bit of a rollover. The only achievements left are the tough ones now, like solo / pacifist and the "Josh Sawyer face" ones. I don't think I have the patience to get any of them really, I contemplated a solo run on easy where I try to pick up some of them but decided to try out Serpent in the Staglands and then Shadowrun Hong Kong. Its been such an amazing few years for CRPGS, Divinity 2 is on the horizon and I still need to get through the first one  .When I was looking up the achievement player stats I was amazed that only ~3 % of people have actually completed the White March and ~ 1 % part 2. How do developers feel putting all that effort making content for a tiny proportion of people? I mean it is presumably financially worth it (otherwise why do it?). Only 10 % of the people who have the game on Steam actually completed it.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:00
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I actually saw an article somewhere relatively recently (PCG? RPS? GB?) that looked into achievement completions. They saw MANY people out there who fire up a game but never even get the "beat the first level" achievement. It was a pretty interesting read.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:11
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mitochondritom posted:So I just completed the final Swamp / Bog encounter with Llengrath and her dragons. It was on hard difficulty and I was expecting a bit of a challenge, but with all my maxed out guys and gear it was a bit of a rollover. The only achievements left are the tough ones now, like solo / pacifist and the "Josh Sawyer face" ones. I don't think I have the patience to get any of them really, I contemplated a solo run on easy where I try to pick up some of them but decided to try out Serpent in the Staglands and then Shadowrun Hong Kong. Its been such an amazing few years for CRPGS, Divinity 2 is on the horizon and I still need to get through the first one Yeah I honestly wouldn't recommend a solo run, especially for achievements like Triple Crown Solo and such. It's very grindy and tedious, you basically kite and tank enemies to death as a paladin or similar tanky character. It might be something cool to try after you finish up your other games, but unless you're truly a grognard lover of solo runs and tedium it's mostly not very fun.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:13
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But... the cheevs... Random question: can dialogue options requiring knowledge of a specific thing like a god require you to be a follower of that god to be selectable? I'm asking because I found and read a bunch of books about them and I'm not able to bust out my knowledge in conversations.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:20
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Suspicious posted:But... the cheevs... If you decide to try it, read through Samuel Clemens' posts in the Let's Play thread. And yes, there are quite a few dialogue options which only show up if the PC is a priest or paladin of a specific deity/order.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:25
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Suspicious posted:But... the cheevs... I think you must be a priest of Eothas / Magran etc to get any deity worshipping specific dialogue, reading a text about Eothosian practises is not enough to satisfy the dialogue gods. It's not a bad idea for the sequel though! I was surprised in the White March how many times my character being an Aristocrat or Wizard came up, there's a lot of good reactivity in this game with regards to Class / Background / Skills.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:43
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Pellisworth posted:Yeah I honestly wouldn't recommend a solo run, especially for achievements like Triple Crown Solo and such. It's very grindy and tedious, you basically kite and tank enemies to death as a paladin or similar tanky character. I don't think solo runs are that bad if you're not doing them on the permadeath Iron Mode setting because you can take a lot more risks and try different things. I feel like most of the tedium comes from Iron Mode making you play everything super safely.
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Aug 19, 2016 22:58
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Khizan posted:I don't think solo runs are that bad if you're not doing them on the permadeath Iron Mode setting because you can take a lot more risks and try different things. I feel like most of the tedium comes from Iron Mode making you play everything super safely. Even if you're not playing permadeath, PotD difficulty gives you enough enemies with high enough defenses you're still going to have to go tank to not get absolutely ruined. Solo runs are all kiting and tanking, you can get away with more stuff depending on difficulty settings but it's gonna be tedious any way you go about it. The tactics aren't really going to change.
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Aug 19, 2016 23:03
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My chanter run was a lot less kiting and a lot more about using terrain properly and chokepointing things.
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Aug 19, 2016 23:19
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Khizan posted:My chanter run was a lot less kiting and a lot more about using terrain properly and chokepointing things. Yeah, depends on where you're at in the game, I found it easier to chokepoint in dungeons and interiors and harder outside in the wilderness. By kiting I didn't mean running around plinking enemies to death with a bow, I mean aggroing a group and running away to split them into manageable chunks, since most enemies will de-aggro and leash when you run out of sight. Ultimately it's the same tactic: you want one or two enemies hitting you, so you either funnel them through a chokepoint or split them off from the pack. On higher difficulties there are more monsters so more need to split up packs. I did a lot less kiting/splitting once I got to Defiance Bay since there are a lot more good chokepoints and you're also getting more powerful (and more summons trinkets) so it's easier to take on larger groups. Edit: for me it was mostly everything before Maerwald that I had to cheese with a lot of kiting, stealth, and I have no idea how you would do the Caed Nua throne room full of specters on solo PotD without cheesing it using the animat summon (use him to distract the ghosts, run by and into the stairwell so they'll lose sight and de-aggro). Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 23:29
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The fun/difficulty of solo runs depends on a lot of parameters. What class you pick, what difficulty you play on, whether it's Trial of Iron or a standard game, how many quests you do, etc. You'll definitely need a certain amount of patience and a fairly in-depth knowledge of the combat mechanics, both of which mean you'll have to be prepared to sink quite a bit of time into the game. That being said, I think the standard TCS achievement isn't that hard/tedious. You can do a full playthrough in less than 10 hours, and the only truly difficult battle that you cannot avoid at all is Thaos. On the other hand, The Ultimate achievement is a genuine grind. But then, I don't think it serves as a useful benchmark anyway considering its requirements are much higher than what you'd normally do on a solo run. I'm pretty sure the only reason it's even in the game is because rope kid wanted to know how many people would be crazy enough to attempt it.
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Aug 19, 2016 23:49
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Samuel Clemens posted:The fun/difficulty of solo runs depends on a lot of parameters. What class you pick, what difficulty you play on, whether it's Trial of Iron or a standard game, how many quests you do, etc. You'll definitely need a certain amount of patience and a fairly in-depth knowledge of the combat mechanics, both of which mean you'll have to be prepared to sink quite a bit of time into the game. That being said, I think the standard TCS achievement isn't that hard/tedious. You can do a full playthrough in less than 10 hours, and the only truly difficult battle that you cannot avoid at all is Thaos. Yeah, just doing the straight up TCS achievement isn't too bad and you can probably do it with a lot of different classes (paladin, monk, chanter, maybe ranger?). The Ultimate is a whole different story since the extra bosses (dragons, mages, bounties, etc) are way harder than just finishing the base game. I have no idea how you'd pull off The Ultimate as anything other than a Paladin, since it's easier to stack defenses on them. I'm sure it's possible, just a lot tougher? Anyway I would recommend paladin, chanter, and monk for solo runs. For starters you want run speed to be able to kite and abuse chokepoints, self-healing, and good defensive stats. Any of the races with defensive traits work well-- Coastal Aumaua, Wild Orlan, Pale Elf. Losing your helmet slot sucks but Moon Godlike would be pretty great for a monk and you could probably do something cool with Fire Godlike. Edit: Samuel Clemens is way more knowledgeable than I on solo runs, I basically just followed his LP as a guide 
Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 00:18
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The slides for my GDCE 2016 talk are now available here: http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/misc/pe-jsawyer-looking-back.pdf
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Aug 20, 2016 02:33
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rope kid posted:The slides for my GDCE 2016 talk are now available here: Thanks. You talked a little about the density of the lore. Can you go into some more detail about that? Specifically, I was wondering how you decided to handle world-building and exposition and threading them into your story - I'm thinking of St. Waidwen here, and how you chose to use different characters (Durance and Eder) and different versions of the same history (via eg books and dialogue with ancillary characters) to build a rounded picture of the events leading up to the Godhammer bomb. One of the things I enjoy most about your games is how you tell nuanced stories in those sorts of complicated ways. It's a trick I'm trying to use in my own writing but I've never been able to articulate any rules for handling exposition and how to parcel it out except to err on the side of too little than too much (that is, it's better to be compelling and mysterious than overbearing and boring). Just wondering if you'd picked up any lessons learned from your time with PoE. Asbury fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 04:24
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3Romeo posted:One of the things I enjoy most about your games is how you tell nuanced stories in those sorts of complicated ways. It's a trick I'm trying to use in my own writing but I've never been able to articulate any rules for handling it except to err on the side of too little information than too much (that is, it's better to be compelling and mysterious than overbearing and boring). Just wondering if you'd picked up any lessons learned from your time with PoE. I can't speak for Obsidian but I definitely prefer it when stories err on the side of mysterious over too much info. What makes Lord of the Rings (books) so great for me is how Tolkien builds this huge diverse world but he gives you just enough and leaves a lot to the imagination. To tie this into Pillars a bit I loved how not every quest had a definitive answer. With Eder for example, we never do find out what motivated his brother and I actually liked that choice a lot. It's a bit depressing but it feels right to not know.
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Aug 20, 2016 04:40
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Ginette Reno posted:With Eder for example, we never do find out what motivated his brother and I actually liked that choice a lot. It's a bit depressing but it feels right to not know. That's specifically what I was thinking of. It takes a certain trust in your own world and story to end a quest where the final result isn't explicit and where the character doesn't get what they want. It's a hard sell and you need to make sure you earned it in the telling along the way. I feel like this approach was more successful with Eder and Durance than, say, Sagani, because the former two tie directly into a recent history made compelling by a complex method of delivery. Like, you spend 40 hours getting different versions of Waidwen and then you get the quest to figure out what the real version is - and you're as interested as Eder is, by this point, because you really want to know! - only there is no version, no twist, no anything. Just a guy who saw what everyone else saw and decided it was holy like a lot of other people. First time I did that quest I thought I'd gotten the bad ending. An ambiguous ending is totally legit but real easy to gently caress up, especially in the first game set in a new world. You have to make your players care about a wiki's worth of information in a short amount of time and how you deliver that information seems like the most important thing to consider because in a story-driven game everything else depends on it. Asbury fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 05:05
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I feel like they overdid it. Almost all the npc quests that I've actually finished end on some variation of empty disappointment. I'm sympathetic to the idea of finding your own meaning in an uncaring universe but it made for a series of frustrating and pointless feeling quests.
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Aug 20, 2016 07:56
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Ginette Reno posted:I can't speak for Obsidian but I definitely prefer it when stories err on the side of mysterious over too much info. What makes Lord of the Rings (books) so great for me is how Tolkien builds this huge diverse world but he gives you just enough and leaves a lot to the imagination. To tie this into Pillars a bit I loved how not every quest had a definitive answer. With Eder for example, we never do find out what motivated his brother and I actually liked that choice a lot. It's a bit depressing but it feels right to not know. Agreed. Decided to finally give this game a go after all this time. Been sitting in my Steam queue for aeons. Yet another BL/Obsidian game I love. The companions are so much fun. My one regret is that I can't take more of them with me. Eder, Aloth, Sagani, Hiravais and Durance got to be there. I like them all but those guys are just amusing as hell. There is something about the ongoing adventures of Eder trying to pet Itumaak that makes me giggle like I'm 10. This and Wasteland 2 have been really nice return to old school fun games. Thanks Ropekid. Outside of the occasional New Vegas I'm not really a gamer anymore. Most games just don't do it for me nowadays. They just don't hook me the way the used to when I was a teen. Thanks for showing me that there are still some games that can I can enjoy playing.
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Aug 20, 2016 08:35
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Ratios and Tendency posted:I feel like they overdid it. Almost all the npc quests that I've actually finished end on some variation of empty disappointment. I'm sympathetic to the idea of finding your own meaning in an uncaring universe but it made for a series of frustrating and pointless feeling quests. Yeah, agreed. I don't mind it when some quests do that, but I dislike it when all the quests end like that. When one quest does it, it is interesting and leads to unanswered questions. When ever quest ends like that you end up like "So, did I actually resolve anything this game?
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Aug 20, 2016 19:05
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Theme is good. Just one mans opinion
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Aug 20, 2016 19:17
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I think the feeling that nothing is resolved is compounded by the irreverence that the characters seem to treat their own lives with. Very shortly after solving the issues that have plagued Maneha's entire life she is back to making quirky remarks about Pagellina etc like nothing has happened. Then shes offering to kill herself in a huge about face after deciding her life is worth it. Similarly with Eder, you solve his quest and then hes back to cracking wise. There is a sort of flippancy in some NPCs that really doesn't mesh well with the thematically dour nature of most of their stories.
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Aug 20, 2016 19:25
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If Edér always spoke and acted like his brother's fate's all he thinks about 24/7 he'd be a loving miserable NPC, though. e: Also, there's plenty of melancholy in his and Maneha's dialogue throughout. And I don't mind the tone of the quests in general, either. Wizard Styles fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 19:50
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Imagine if when you completed their quests all they talked about was how lovely everything is now and how bummed they are. That wouldn't be very fun.
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Aug 20, 2016 20:23
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I think if all Eder talked about was his brother he'd be more like a one dimensional Bioware character. I love the fact that he and others have more realistic personalities and multiple facets and don't just harp on about the same topic over and over. Say your mother died when you were young. It was traumatic. Would you talk about it at every conversation? No. You wanna live life, pet vicious wolves and make bestiality jokes. Or maybe making wise cracks and petting cats is Eder's coping mechanism.
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Aug 20, 2016 21:22
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Konsek posted:Or maybe making wise cracks and petting cats is Eder's coping mechanism. Itumaak is not a cat 
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Aug 20, 2016 21:28
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3Romeo posted:Thanks. The stories about Eothas and St. Waidwen are intentionally varied and unclear for the sake of maintaining a mystery about what happened and why. Did Eothas actually possess Waidwen? If so, why? Why did he march on the Dyrwood? Was he actually destroyed? Are the gods tight-lipped about it because they know and don't want to share the details or is it because they're as clueless as mortals?
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Aug 20, 2016 21:38
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The "HERE IS ALL THE LORE START READING!" aspect of Dragon Age is one of the big reasons I did not loving like that lovely loving game. So thanks for showing restraint!
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Aug 20, 2016 21:53
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I thought the Waidwen / Eothas mystery was great and the lore dump wasn't too bad for me. I knew what I was in for!GrumpyGoesWest posted:Imagine if when you completed their quests all they talked about was how lovely everything is now and how bummed they are. That wouldn't be very fun. Konsek posted:I think if all Eder talked about was his brother he'd be more like a one dimensional Bioware character. Wizard Styles posted:If Edér always spoke and acted like his brother's fate's all he thinks about 24/7 he'd be a loving miserable NPC I take all of your points and accept you are all right. But in the Dragon Age games the characters do similar things though (Alastair being the prime example). It is more muted in Pillars and its not as big a deal as I am making out, I really like all the NPCs, even Meneha. That might be because she is a total powerhouse though. My favourite NPC is Pagellina because she is no nonsense and she realistically babbles in some incoherent foreign language when she is pissed off, which is doubly hilarious because my main character was a Valian aristocrat and so she should theoretically understand her.
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Aug 20, 2016 23:23
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rope kid posted:I think the early game is too lore heavy and there are too many exposition dumps. There's too much to communicate in a short period of time. I think it's important to ask not only what players need to know but also how much/to what level. Being a little restrained in exposition -- for the sake of pacing, not necessarily for maintaining a mystery -- can make a big difference. Great answer, thanks for fielding this.
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Aug 21, 2016 00:13
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mitochondritom posted:My favourite NPC is Pagellina because she is no nonsense and she realistically babbles in some incoherent foreign language when she is pissed off, which is doubly hilarious because my main character was a Valian aristocrat and so she should theoretically understand her.
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Aug 21, 2016 01:41
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Konsek posted:Or maybe making wise cracks and petting cats is Eder's coping mechanism. One of the first things your character notices when you join up with Eder is that he makes a joke and smiles but his eyes are dull and lifeless, that he's just going through the motions. So basically, yes.
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Aug 21, 2016 02:41
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Pwnstar posted:One of the first things your character notices when you join up with Eder is that he makes a joke and smiles but his eyes are dull and lifeless, that he's just going through the motions. So basically, yes. I just saw this happen and it's my favorite Eder joke.
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Aug 21, 2016 04:01
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The mob of Lagufilth in Longwatch Falls in the eastern half of the map, just after the party has to cross a very narrow bridge, they may be the biggest bullshit I've run into so far in this game. I can't figure out a good way to deal with them. I'm getting angry on my fifth attempt. I've tried kiting them across the bridge and that rarely works, they paralyze whoever I'm using to bait them across a trapped bridge. Charging into them head on doesn't work well either. Goddamnit.
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Aug 21, 2016 14:11
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Wildtortilla posted:The mob of Lagufilth in Longwatch Falls in the eastern half of the map, just after the party has to cross a very narrow bridge, they may be the biggest bullshit I've run into so far in this game. I can't figure out a good way to deal with them. I'm getting angry on my fifth attempt. I've tried kiting them across the bridge and that rarely works, they paralyze whoever I'm using to bait them across a trapped bridge. Charging into them head on doesn't work well either. Goddamnit. If you haven't learned how to properly use consumables and buffs, now is certainly the time to try. Prayer Against Imprisonment gives immunity to paralyzation, btw, as does Litany against Major Afflictions. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Aug 21, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 14:54
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I got through it. I went all out on buffs and rebuffs, Aloth and Pallegina fell early in the fight but that only pissed me off and I started using the highest tier abilities at my disposal. Grieving Mother's Puppet Master ability is wickedly useful. Do ciphers generate focus based on damage they deal or each attack they do? I switched GM to a fast bow from using a pistol and her focus is filling up much quicker. I'm so happy with the bow that I just gave her Heart of the Storm and am now seeking out the second part of Stormcaller for her.
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Aug 21, 2016 16:01
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