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Chairchucker posted:This isn't 'like D&D' because most decent GMs won't throw stuff at you that is way too high level for you, and if they did you would get a new GM. I dunno, I'd argue a good DM knows that an even difficulty curve can quickly feel predictable, and that forcing a group to flee from danger, or get clever and deal with things without brute forcing them, can greatly enhance a campaign.
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Feb 8, 2017 09:40
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Note that a good DM has good judgement and will probably endeavor to not actually just murder the party with that out-of-depth encounter. I don't think game systems generally have AI directors with the same level of care. IE, the human DM is not willing to let you feel like you're slamming your dick in a door for hours on end, but the computer often is, unless care is given to prevent such things from happening in the first place.Tony Montana posted:I just love how video games have broken our video games skills so when a real video game comes along we have difficulty with it.
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Feb 8, 2017 09:45
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I throw high level characters at my players all the time. If they want to act stupid at this point I let them but they don't anymore. Usually they pick up on the clues or if they wish to talk their way out of it even better. I'll never one shot them though. After a couple years our group plays really well.
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Feb 8, 2017 09:50
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FreeKillB posted:Note that a good DM has good judgement and will probably endeavor to not actually just murder the party with that out-of-depth encounter. I don't think game systems generally have AI directors with the same level of care. Well, yes. But given we were already agreeing that D&D is a different thing, I just wanted to point out that high level/impossible encounters have a place in the economy of communal storytelling.
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Feb 8, 2017 10:03
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That point about the drake vs. random murloc-looking enemy pack is fair. Players are looking for tells to signal to them how difficult an encounter is, if they don't have the help of information like an explicit level attached to an enemy. Sometimes a game relies heavily on main plot breadcrumbs and discrete zones so the player has a strong sense that they're being led to an area only when they should be strong enough to take it on. With humanoid enemies, you can often use equipment as a signal - if that area is guarded by enemy soldiers wearing gear that far outstrips what your guys have yet, that's a hint to stay back. I'm sympathetic to the challenge of balancing a sense of open-world exploration and good encounter layout/design. It's probably tough to hit the sweet-spot that'll satisfy everyone.
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Feb 8, 2017 10:17
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I mean, I thought the intent of Expert mode was to disable quality-of-life features like 'hey player get out of here fast or you're dog food' for people who wanted the 'hardcore' Tony-Montana-style experience.
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Feb 8, 2017 10:22
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Good DMs don't let their players play D&D.
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Feb 8, 2017 10:34
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But imo, that open workd exploration thing only works if its actually real. If the game gives you three areas and you can explore each that's great, if only one of them is actually doable then it's just a fake choice to present an illusion of an open world. I don't get what enjoyment someone gets from jumping down that drake hole and get murdered (or if you actually beat it - backtrack anyway because why would you skip content). It's just a reload and five minutes so not a big deal to get upset over of course, but did that actually add anything? On that note, branching paths in an rpg like this are kind of weird anyway. In that very first dungeon in poe, you can disarm the traps, do the puzzle, or take a sidepath to get through - great on paper, but in realitty I'll just disarm the traps for the xp, do the puzzle, then backtrack to clear and loot the sidepath too - I asume so do most people, right? And yet another strange decision is convincing the expansion bonus boss not to fight you - and therefore miss out on the most challenging fight in the game. Story wise my character might want to do that, but since I am playing a game, why would I, the player, want to? Avalerion fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 10:38
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I dunno, I'd argue a good DM knows that an even difficulty curve can quickly feel predictable, and that forcing a group to flee from danger, or get clever and deal with things without brute forcing them, can greatly enhance a campaign. A good DM is much more reactive than any computer game can be, isn't bound to the fight as written, and knows that the main goal is for everybody to have a good experience. Accordingly, a good DM can do things like bring in reinforcements if a fight is going way too easily or they can refrain from bringing in the planned reinforcements if things are going hard for the group. They can work a TPK into the storyline somehow(you all wake up in the dungeon, etc). That's why tabletop gaming is a terrible reference point for computer gaming. Tony Montana posted:Do you really need numbers to tell you that you just lost like 3 loving times in a row, perhaps you're not ready? Losing three times in a row doesn't necessarily mean you are underleveled or underpowered. A lot of the time it means your tactics weren't right, especially on PotD, and there's lots of things that could be. Bad spell selection, poor party composition, focusing the wrong targets, rushing instead of chokepointing, chokepointing instead of rushing. Maybe you need to heavy armor up your backline for the extra durability, maybe you need your tanks to run sword and board for the extra durability, whatever. Having access to level information or the like is nice because it lets you make a determination between "This fight is only a level above me, I should be able to take it if I change my approach" and "This fight is 5 levels above me and I should come back later".
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Feb 8, 2017 11:09
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Hey I finally remembered something I wanted real bad in PoE2: rope kid please make sure that traps aren't a waste of time and inventory and also let us place lots of traps. Traps were great as a dungeon mechanic but I could never get them to work in combat, especially when I was already juggling potions/scrolls/spells.
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Feb 8, 2017 11:15
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LET US SEARCH FOR TRAPS WITHOUT MOVING AT HALF SPEED NOT SORRY FOR CAPS
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Feb 8, 2017 11:17
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Avalerion posted:I don't get what enjoyment someone gets from jumping down that drake hole and get murdered (or if you actually beat it - backtrack anyway because why would you skip content). It's just a reload and five minutes so not a big deal to get upset over of course, but did that actually add anything? It was dangerous. Like really dangerous. Not in a 'oh I'll drink some health pots and smash that fucker', it was dangerous in a 'you can replay this thing 10 times doing everything possible and you still wont win'. I haven't felt that in a long time. It felt great, I suddenly sat up in my seat and realized I was in some really deep poo poo. Furthermore I didn't have to get murdered, I got murdered because my head was still in 'games are easy and I know them' mode and didn't just stop and consider what I could do for long enough. I reached straight for the quickload, but because this was a non-linear situation I could have snuck away and fought my way back up. That's why I'm playing the game at all. I don't give a poo poo for killing things, they're just pixels on a screen, after I've killed it once it's all the same. I'm playing the game to be put in situations where I actually have to think as my characters and that is immersive. Khizan posted:Losing three times in a row doesn't necessarily mean you are underleveled or underpowered. A lot of the time it means your tactics weren't right, especially on PotD, and there's lots of things that could be. Bad spell selection, poor party composition, focusing the wrong targets, rushing instead of chokepointing, chokepointing instead of rushing. Maybe you need to heavy armor up your backline for the extra durability, maybe you need your tanks to run sword and board for the extra durability, whatever. Yeah but this can go too far. For instance if I just engage a bad mob and it kills me hard, I can reload and play with stuff and maybe do better. But if I'm reloading over and over to the point where I'm putting the heaviest armour I've got on my party member I know will cop the most damage, just because I've done the encounter so many times, I'm readying scrolls that I know do the most damage to these enemies because I've seen them last reload, etc, where is the fun in that? I got to a point where I was jacking Elder full of Sevf (that drug you find) and doing all sorts of stuff to get past an encounter and I just thought 'this is ridiculous. There is no way in any roleplaying sense I would be doing all this, I would have no idea this next encounter is so hard or I want to get past it so much'. It's boring too, after doing it twice just adjusting positing and running through it all again (using almost every spell from both me and Aloth) became a chore. I guess I'm saying if you can't pass it on the first go, with your default loadout then yes you can savescum and use the precog information you learned to to better... but I hope you then get smashed by the next mob ad infinitum because youre not supposed to be here!
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Feb 8, 2017 11:31
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Ferrinus posted:LET US SEARCH FOR TRAPS WITHOUT MOVING AT HALF SPEED NOT SORRY FOR CAPS Excuse my comrades tone, he has drunk too much ale. He does speak the truth, however, and you would be wise to listen.
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Feb 8, 2017 11:32
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Tony Montana posted:Excuse my comrades tone, he has drunk too much ale. He does speak the truth, however, and you would be wise to listen. Yeah. Get rid of scout mode for searching all together. Make it just stealth. As it is I just spend all my time sneaking at double speed, which is dumb.
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Feb 8, 2017 11:50
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You know what we really need is trap disarming and lockpicking mini-games. 
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Feb 8, 2017 12:23
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I don't mind the Sneaking around for finding traps because ~ immersion ~ but what I really hate is that the AI will walk right into a trap I just found if I'm not being careful. And that, I really do mind. I mean, the character either knows or doesn't know there's a trap there, but you can't show it to him while having the AI still walk right in the middle. I reckon "dynamic pathfinding" is maybe hard to code because a lot of games behave like PoE in this regard.
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Feb 8, 2017 12:29
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My favourite thing about Tyranny was that enemies could set off traps too.
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Feb 8, 2017 12:57
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Enigmatic Cakelord posted:You know what we really need is trap disarming and lockpicking mini-games. *swings longsword at your head*
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Feb 8, 2017 13:03
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CottonWolf posted:My favourite thing about Tyranny was that enemies could set off traps too. This and trap being visible and making sense was a change I deeply appreciated that I keep championing for in PoE2, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who cares.
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Feb 8, 2017 13:54
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Just got to read the last update. Berath's gifts sound awesome. Now I need to unlock all those achievements I always put off. I have an on-going TCS which I should complete quite easily now that Samuel Clemens showed us The Way. I'm more concerned about the Pacifist one. How do you even attempt this? Do you need to do a TCS run with a Rogue? For the No Rest one, I reckon you just use Easy Mode? Is the achievement enabled in that difficulty level?
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Feb 8, 2017 14:36
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zedprime posted:Backer NPCs were wholly written by junior writers on the Obsidian team based on short prompts from the backer. There's a reason the collaborative stuff this time around is only the big ticket items.  Well at least they learned their lesson I guess.edit: if I sound unreasonably pissed about this, it's because I didn't understand what the golden-named NPCs were at first, and actually spent the time to read their dumb stories until like halfway through the game. Aardark fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 14:39
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Reaching out to one of the gold nameplate people should have given us a prompt to awaken their souls and drive them insane, creating random berserker chaos in towns without hurting our reputations directly. Like go into the Fox and goose and just start a bar brawl to the death.
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Feb 8, 2017 14:46
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Part of the reason I stopped playing the first time around is that I would read the gold NPCs' stuff and get interminably bored. Now I'm just using tab to find them and then ignore them.
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Feb 8, 2017 14:49
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Furism posted:I'm more concerned about the Pacifist one. Remember, it's 'relative' pacifism. So you're still allowed to kill, what, 100 things or so? Will necessitate not straying too far from the critical path, probably. Just always go for the non-violent solutions to quests, and also you don't really have to solo to sneak past things, you can leave the rest of your party elsewhere. I'll probably never get that achievement because I just can't stop sweeping maps clean of enemies.
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Feb 8, 2017 14:52
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Aardark posted:Holy poo poo, all that garbage was actually written by Obsidian people? More like"here take this garbage and make it less terrible"
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Feb 8, 2017 14:56
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Never ever let people contribute anything to your game's actual content via Kickstarter. There was a tabletop KS a while back with a controversial premise, and someone hate-backed it at a high enough level to write an NPC for it, and wrote something that basically didn't fit with the setting and purposefully went against the spirit of the thing. There was a big blowup over it and they forced the person to have their money back. People are the worst, don't give them any more chances to be terrible.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:02
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Serf posted:Never ever let people contribute anything to your game's actual content via Kickstarter. There was a tabletop KS a while back with a controversial premise, and someone hate-backed it at a high enough level to write an NPC for it, and wrote something that basically didn't fit with the setting and purposefully went against the spirit of the thing. There was a big blowup over it and they forced the person to have their money back. Any link to this?
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Feb 8, 2017 15:04
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Even poe had that tombstone thing generating internet outrage on both sides of the sjw spectrum.  Edit: basically those tomb stones none should actually read, someone did and found one entry offensive. Nerds argued and there was outrage so in the end obs removed it, which generated some more outrage by folks bitching about the removal. Someone actually cared enough that they bothered to make a mod to put it back in. 
Avalerion fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 15:11
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Avalerion posted:Even poe had that tombstone thing generating internet outrage on both sides of the sjw spectrum. I forget what happened there. Someone wrote a story that basically went too far in some way and no one caught it when it went on a tombstone and it got edited (with consent and help from the original writer, I think?) after the game was released but people got upset that it got changed?
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Feb 8, 2017 15:20
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Kurtofan posted:Any link to this? Unfortunately my searching has not turned up a concise post about it anywhere. It was the Blue Rose KS, and mostly it took place in backer comments that I don't think non-backers can see. I'll keep looking, but as pointed out PoE had this happen to them as well. More reason to not allow it.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:22
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Samuel Clemens posted:I've always felt a game giving concrete level recommendations was silly and immersion-breaking, but given how many people stumble into Longwatch Falls at low levels despite one of the NPCs specifically warning you against it, I'm beginning to understand where they're coming from. It's pretty understated. Haefric is just like yeah those guys are tough be careful. I avoided Cragholdt my first time through because whastherface the Statue was explicit in saying that was a level of power beyond anything I'd fought to that point. The Lagafueth are basically that too but it's not made clear until you put your hand in that fire and get burned. Ginette Reno fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 15:24
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marshmallow creep posted:I forget what happened there. Someone wrote a story that basically went too far in some way and no one caught it when it went on a tombstone and it got edited (with consent and help from the original writer, I think?) after the game was released but people got upset that it got changed? The original backer tombstone: quote:Here lies Fireborn, a hero in bed. Some folks complained it was transmisogynistic, some other folks complained that if it got changed it would signal the end of freedom for all. "Won't anyone think of the straight white male for once??" they cried. Obsidian sided on not offending people over four lines of text for no goddamn reason and contacted the backer about changing the text. Changed to: quote:Here lies Fireborn, a bard, a poet, And everyone reasonable shrugged and said "ok good enough" though you could probably find someone over at RPG codex who's still angry at Josh "SJW" Sawyer for hating fun or whatever
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Feb 8, 2017 15:31
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In character warnings like that are easilly dismissed anyway, of course a commoner eill tell you going to a monster infected place is dangerous but that's what adventurers do. This stuff needs to be spelled out explictly, kind of like the point of no return warns you in an actuall popup rather than having some fisherman tell you to be carefull or whatever.
Avalerion fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Feb 8, 2017 |
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Feb 8, 2017 15:32
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Avalerion posted:In character earnings like that are easilly dismissed anyway, of course a commoner eill tell you going to a monster infected place is dangerous but that's what adventurers do. This stuff needs to be spelled out explictly, kind of like the point of no return warns you in an actuall popup rather than having some fisherman tell you to be carefull or whatever. What's funny is it still doesn't work. Sawyer talked about this in New Vegas: multiple NPCs, road signs, etc, all tell you that going north will get you killed. If you walk through Sloan a miner runs up and forces a conversation about the deathclaws over the ridge. If you go to Black Mountain a friendly mutant stops you and warns you about the crazed super mutants that will kill you dead if you keep that direction. Apparently tons of players still go trooping on and get angry and frustrated when they can't win and quit playing. Bethesda has convinced a generation of gamers that if you walk the wrong way and hit a dragon when you're level 5 you'll still be able to win with a little tenacity.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:36
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maybe they should have a little ui option to tell you what level an area is meant for on the main map, kind of like how you can turn on & off character disposition choices?
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Feb 8, 2017 15:39
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I actually find it hilarious and kind of awesome that they made an NCP's warning actually mean something. I'm slowly playing through Divinity Original Sin and I absolutely just wandered out of the first town and got my poo poo wrecked like twice before I stopped to talk to everyone.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:42
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Litany Unheard posted:What's funny is it still doesn't work. Sawyer talked about this in New Vegas: multiple NPCs, road signs, etc, all tell you that going north will get you killed. If you walk through Sloan a miner runs up and forces a conversation about the deathclaws over the ridge. If you go to Black Mountain a friendly mutant stops you and warns you about the crazed super mutants that will kill you dead if you keep that direction. If you're not careful you'll summon MisterBibs to the thread.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:43
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Litany Unheard posted:What's funny is it still doesn't work. That's what I said, having characters, signs, scenery... does not work. Needs to be spelled out in the ui somewhere to be made explict, not in the game world. A popup, loading screen tip, something on the map maybe. A sign saying danger, here be dragons is an invitation, not a deterent.
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Feb 8, 2017 16:00
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Avalerion posted:I don't get what enjoyment someone gets from jumping down that drake hole and get murdered (or if you actually beat it - backtrack anyway because why would you skip content). It's just a reload and five minutes so not a big deal to get upset over of course, but did that actually add anything? The Drake is easier than the Ogre level, so jumping right to him is not a bad idea if you want Persistence early. Also, what kind of adventurer doesn't immediately jump down every hole she sees? Furism posted:I'm more concerned about the Pacifist one. How do you even attempt this? Do you need to do a TCS run with a Rogue? It's actually fairly easy if you play on Easy/Normal and skip all quests without a peaceful resolution. Not very interesting, though.
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Feb 8, 2017 16:05
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Litany Unheard posted:What's funny is it still doesn't work. Sawyer talked about this in New Vegas: multiple NPCs, road signs, etc, all tell you that going north will get you killed. If you walk through Sloan a miner runs up and forces a conversation about the deathclaws over the ridge. If you go to Black Mountain a friendly mutant stops you and warns you about the crazed super mutants that will kill you dead if you keep that direction. Expectations are important, though. Pillars looks linear: You start on one map, you progress from map to map with occasional backtracking. Then you get to the city node where everything is roughly doable at the level you get there or gated off by plot progression that ensures you'll probably have enough experience to handle it. And if you don't, you also know you're in a pretty normal "do quest, get stronger to do more quest" pattern so if something is hard you know you can come back to it. Nobody ends up upset that jumping into Dyrford's dungeon is rough if you head there straight from Caed Nua because you've crossed several zones to get there so by all "gaming" instincts its going to be a higher level. This is why I'm always surprised the drake pit irritates people. It just made me go "fair enough, you warned me" and try again. By contrast, WM1 has large jumps in difficulty with one map transition. It has large jumps in difficulty on the same map! You can handle the first half of Longwatch alright sometimes, but that pack across the large bridge is a huge difficulty leap (at least for me) without any real indication. And in some ways, it looks like you're supposed to go that way. That's the frustrating part about it (and the temple of Eothas), I think: it can easily look like you're supposed to go that way so you end up mad that the game is being a dick. I suspect that the temple would be a lot less of a shock if it was a zone or two away from the town because it really seems like you should go there immediately. The drake pit basically screams "this is a shortcut if want to take on a large challenge!" and that's ok because you know you're skipping the obvious linear path so it being harder is ok, too.
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