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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I don't think the game is even designed to support that kind of mechanic. In Baldur's Gate there are clearly under the hood features to support it, to the point where even in single-player talking with certain NPCs with a different party members will wield different results (usually only marginally so). I don't think that kind of stuff is present in Deadfire. It works fine, again, in Baldurs Gate. Pillars is set up to support it because you can create adventurers so the game already supports further player made characters that aren't the actual main character. They don't talk in dialogues, instead only the PC would do - just like in Baldurs gate. Since you'd be locked to the same screen it wouldn't even need to whip the camera a thousand kilometres to wherever the PC was if the other player started talking to a random NPC. I mean I dunno how much coding is involved to lock the screen of course but all the rest of it already exists.
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Mar 17, 2019 12:18
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Not to be reductive, but the fact that people are able to engage in pages of debates about this game’s ending and that people have strong opinions about it means it’s probably .... good? It set out to do a thing and it did it well imo, although I’d fully admit my expectations were subverted hard the first time around and I was a bit disappointed.
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Mar 17, 2019 12:25
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The MP in Baldur's Gate is pretty janky, took a lot of stuffing around for them to implement, and a ridiculously small percentage of players used it. It is not remotely worth their while implementing something similar.
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Mar 17, 2019 12:26
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Entropy238 posted:Not to be reductive, but the fact that people are able to engage in pages of debates about this game’s ending and that people have strong opinions about it means it’s probably .... good? It set out to do a thing and it did it well imo, although I’d fully admit my expectations were subverted hard the first time around and I was a bit disappointed. By that metric Mass Effect 3 had the best ending ever. Lots of speculations indeed.
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Mar 17, 2019 12:51
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Taear posted:It works fine, again, in Baldurs Gate. I know you genuinely think you've laid down the foundation for your argument, but you haven't. The game hasn't been designed to have Multiplayer, and it's likely not just a question to bolt some network code and UI on top of it to make it possible. We're talking about what could potentially be a refactor of some core code in a game that is already pretty fragile and criticized for having too many bugs. It's not gonna happen. I'm not saying, by the way, that multiplayer is bad or a bad idea or whatever. People clearly liked it in Divinity. I'm just saying that there are very good reasons as to why it won't suddenly be added in the console versions of this game.
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Mar 17, 2019 12:55
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Avalerion posted:By that metric Mass Effect 3 had the best ending ever. Lots of speculations indeed. No, people almost universally poo poo on it, and not in depth. The only thing they went in depth on was how they hosed it up so bad. Actually talking about the ending itself would have been a step up for that game.
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Mar 17, 2019 13:00
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Entropy238 posted:Not to be reductive, but the fact that people are able to engage in pages of debates about this game’s ending and that people have strong opinions about it means it’s probably .... good? It set out to do a thing and it did it well imo, although I’d fully admit my expectations were subverted hard the first time around and I was a bit disappointed. I like the ending! But... I mean, I have strong feelings and got a lot of enjoyment out of The Room, but I wouldn't call it good under any stretch of the imagination. That movie simply failed at what it set out to do and was reinvented by its audience, essentially. There is, nowadays, a lot of discussion surrounding the movie, because it's essentially a cult hit, and we even have video essays about it, some humorous, some not so much. It's still hard to call The Room a good movie under most of our societal ideas of what constitutes good. But yeah, IMO, Deadfire's ending is good and the writing is overall good.
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Mar 17, 2019 13:05
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I know you genuinely think you've laid down the foundation for your argument, but you haven't. The game hasn't been designed to have Multiplayer, and it's likely not just a question to bolt some network code and UI on top of it to make it possible. We're talking about what could potentially be a refactor of some core code in a game that is already pretty fragile and criticized for having too many bugs. It's not gonna happen. And I'm not saying that it's easy to code or possible to code, I'm just saying that the general mechanics of the game don't make it impossible to implement and that the idea of it isn't insane like Chairchucker seems to think. I actually thought pillars already had it in, I didn't realise it wasn't there. Mulva posted:No, people almost universally poo poo on it, and not in depth. The only thing they went in depth on was how they hosed it up so bad. Actually talking about the ending itself would have been a step up for that game. Yea - the discussion of pillars endings is what they mean and why they mean that to the person. The discussion of ME3's ending was "Here's how I would have done it because it's poo poo right now"
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Mar 17, 2019 13:09
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Avalerion posted:By that metric Mass Effect 3 had the best ending ever. Lots of speculations indeed. Sure, controversy isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality. I’d still maintain though that the dissatisfaction about the ending in PoE 2 is primarily about people having their expectations subverted rather than anything to do with its substantive quality. ME3 was a bait and switch and very much gave the impression that the players’ choices would affect the ending of the game. Deadfire is about inevitability, decline, failure of people to cooperate to further their best interests, rapacious colonialism, subjugation and the futility of people vs. gods. The ending, and the way in which the player can change the ending, fits the theme of the game very well.
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Mar 17, 2019 13:13
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Taear posted:And I'm not saying that it's easy to code or possible to code, I'm just saying that the general mechanics of the game don't make it impossible to implement and that the idea of it isn't insane like Chairchucker seems to think. Honestly I don't know anything about how hard or easy it is to implement multiplayer, or how worthwhile it is, which is why I'm just going off of what some of the Obsidian guys have said. I think Rope Kid specifically said it was pretty difficult to implement.
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Mar 17, 2019 14:05
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Chairchucker posted:Honestly I don't know anything about how hard or easy it is to implement multiplayer, or how worthwhile it is, which is why I'm just going off of what some of the Obsidian guys have said. I think Rope Kid specifically said it was pretty difficult to implement. Coding wise sure but it's not because of the story/underlying assumptions of how the game works.
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Mar 17, 2019 14:13
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I completely understand that resources and time are finite. Development prioritizes certain aspects that will take precedence over others that will only get done as a secondary facet, or not at all. And those choices can sometimes be fairly subjective depending on what your preferences may be. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a multiplayer mode. Though I dread to think about the logistics of adding it to a game that was not designed for it from the ground up, especially considering the new Turn-Based mode.
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Mar 17, 2019 14:15
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Avalerion posted:Ultimately, would not knowing the twist from PoE1 change how you act towards or feel about the gods? What about if they had been the natural gods of this world? Or if it wasn't presented as a twist, but the gods manufactured origin was already common knowledge and just another part of the setting from the get go? Wrt the lack of setup, plotwise I don't think they could set it up or foreshadow it without tipping their hand- which they kind of did if you bring Aloth the first time you go to Elms' Reach, the tree ladies mention people who denied the gods in the past and Aloth goes "whuh? The gods don't exist?!" The setup I guess could be considered to be the fact that the gods are clearly active in the world and the Engwithans mysteriously vanished millennia ago and nobody knows why- I mean, presumably the gods would know why, right? ProfessorCirno posted:The "plot twist" in Deadfire has the same problem the "plot twist" in Pillars 1 has, in that it's not a twist because it doesn't really connect to most of the plot or your characters' personal story. It's a cool lore detail you'd read about in a setting book. Wrt the twist in the first game, it's the reason you're doomed to go mad, "are there no gods" was the question on the Inquisitor's lips when he/she died, and getting the answer resolves the plot. Avalerion posted:By that metric Mass Effect 3 had the best ending ever. Lots of speculations indeed.
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Mar 17, 2019 14:25
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2house2fly posted:It would depend on what the story is doing with it. I think Deadfire could have benefited from exploring this with your party members- part of the reason Eothas is doing what he's doing is to expose the gods! Show the ways people might react to that through the people we spend time with! This is something I remember Planescape:Torment in particular doing very very well. Every trauma, influence and betrayal is laid bare for you to contend with at the end. What you get out of them is a result of what you put into them, for good or ill. Even Vhailor and Ignus who seemed pretty single-minded for most of the game have some pretty compelling moments of characterization and development at the end depending on what you do and say.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:08
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Chairchucker posted:Still angry that the only way to make Lord Harond 'see justice' is to kill him BTW.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:15
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Tin Can Hit Man posted:That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a multiplayer mode. Though I dread to think about the logistics of adding it to a game that was not designed for it from the ground up, especially considering the new Turn-Based mode. I don't think a lot of people are against multi-player per se, it's just that in a zero-sum game, some people prioritize other things on their wishlist. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian looked at that in the future, what with Divinity: Original Sin 2 being mega-successful and all.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:32
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Basic Chunnel posted:What else do you expect from the bourgouisie I literally built a dungeon.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:43
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I don't think a lot of people are against multi-player per se, it's just that in a zero-sum game, some people prioritize other things on their wishlist. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Obsidian looked at that in the future, what with Divinity: Original Sin 2 being mega-successful and all. I'd say the multiplayer in Divinity Sin 2 actively reduced my enjoyment of the game though because it meant that if you spoke to an NPC with a different character they didn't treat you like your party had spoken to them before. Which wouldn't be too bad if the game didn't sometimes start a conversation with whoever was closest, loving stuff up.
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Mar 17, 2019 15:59
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Taear posted:I'd say the multiplayer in Divinity Sin 2 actively reduced my enjoyment of the game though because it meant that if you spoke to an NPC with a different character they didn't treat you like your party had spoken to them before. That *was* a design/implementation problem in Divinity: Original Sin 2, though I don't think it's unsolvable. Divinity: Original Sin 2's multiplayer design is actually REALLY ambitious, so I'm not surprised that there are points where it ends up interfering a little with the single-player, though according to Larian it also forced their designers to think outside the box and constantly think of a plan C and D to avoid the possibility of screwing up quests/main content.
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Mar 17, 2019 16:02
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I was bored enough to actually track down the JE Sawyer quote on Multiplayer. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3807509&userid=17931#post468874349
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Mar 17, 2019 16:30
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I think online multiplayer in general was less popular around the turn of the century, but then isometric RPGs were probably more popular than they are now, relatively
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Mar 17, 2019 16:49
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I expected Soul Blade/Trickster to be grossly overpowered but I'm realizing quickly that there's never enough guile to go around to be both a good rogue and a good illusionist, and turn based makes it really easy to end up casting things that aren't soul annihilation, so neither spec feels super impactful (but I really wish single target echoes could be self targeted, soul shock was a really dumb level 1 pick for the intro fight) Also the game's itemization issues still make it really hard to not steal everything that can be stolen; the only purchasable unique breastplate and rapier being legendaries really sucks. edit - BG had online multiplayer just before the internet exploded or like around the same time, too so I imagine the setup would have been extremely finnicky at the time compared to the relative ease of today
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Mar 17, 2019 16:51
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The PoE1 twist is the reason the protagonist of the game (Eothas) does like, everything. It's behind his plan in Deadfire and Beast of Winter shows it was behind his plan during the Saint's War too. He doesn't want to just straight up show up and be like "hey i'm a god and we suck," he wants Kith to figure it out themselves and change things, and he's willing to do tremendously destructive things if it achieves those ends. The player character knowing the true nature of the gods is important because it allows both the player and the PC to understand Eothas' motivations and thus formulate an appropriate response (both in character and out of character.) also, ME3's ending post-patch was fine
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Mar 17, 2019 16:54
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For another "History happens whether you want it to or not" ending whose main issue is execution, DA2's would have been okay conceptually but poo poo like the mandatory Orsino fight just made it feel like you played through an unironic fantasy rendition of Merchant of Venice
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Mar 17, 2019 16:58
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Yeah the meta story in both games is the transition from seeing the world as decided by gods to seeing it decided by men. This aligns very well to the main and secondary quests of both games. I'd argue that several hundreds of pages of discussion on the story and quest ramifications is proof that it was effective for much of the audience. If it wasn't effective for you that's also fine. It is fine and normal for different people to react differently to media. Strong strong disagree on the spoiler. In Me3 the discussion was less "what did the quest mean" and more "the quest meaning was very in your face and that gets contradicted by the ending. Also why did major thematic elements x y and z get abandoned." Full credit to bioware for setting a billion dollar setting on fire though. That actually rules. I don't think it was even intentional though which is another knock on the writing there
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Mar 17, 2019 17:06
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:That *was* a design/implementation problem in Divinity: Original Sin 2, though I don't think it's unsolvable. Divinity: Original Sin 2's multiplayer design is actually REALLY ambitious, so I'm not surprised that there are points where it ends up interfering a little with the single-player, though according to Larian it also forced their designers to think outside the box and constantly think of a plan C and D to avoid the possibility of screwing up quests/main content. I'd be fine that if any conversation was initiated it just let Player 1 do the conversation, regardless of who started it in reality, but then I'm thinking of local multiplayer on a shared console and not playing with random people. Best Friends posted:Full credit to bioware for setting a billion dollar setting on fire though. That actually rules. I don't think it was even intentional though which is another knock on the writing there I mean that's deliberate, it was meant to be "the end" of the series and necessarily of the setting, I guess.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:20
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Taear posted:I mean that's deliberate, it was meant to be "the end" of the series and necessarily of the setting, I guess. Them launching a new ME game right after to me indicates they did not want the end the setting. Though maybe that was a left hand / right hand organizational miscommunication.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:39
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Taear posted:I mean that's deliberate, it was meant to be "the end" of the series and necessarily of the setting, I guess. I always have wanted to be in the room when EA's execs realized what Bioware had done. Because I honestly never understood how Mac Walters & Casey Hudson weren't fired for deliberately torching 50% of Bioware's flagship product.
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Mar 17, 2019 17:43
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Anyone know if the -armour rating from blackened plate stacks with other sources like Hel Hyraf’s fury?
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Mar 17, 2019 19:25
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Entropy238 posted:Anyone know if the -armour rating from blackened plate stacks with other sources like Hel Hyraf’s fury? iirc none of the armor debuffs stack with each other, including stuff like the mace modal. e: I may be mistaking armor reduction effects for penetration bonuses, which I'm pretty sure don't stack. Or maybe they do, sometimes. En Garde Motherfuckers fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 19:33
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Leaked focus group testing suggested that they were going to do prequels and side stories and flesh out the setting pre-Shepard, but the surveyed fan responses heavily preferred sequels and continuing the timeline - I suspect partly as backlash towards the ambiguous and unconventional, but basically fine, ME3 ending. Perhaps after a few games they would have come back to ME4 with a fresh take and enough distance to handwave the different endings, but it's possible they were happy to simply wind up the largely-exhausted setting in favour of developing new IPs. Fandom is still actually rather niche.
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Mar 17, 2019 19:34
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Entropy238 posted:Not to be reductive, but the fact that people are able to engage in pages of debates about this game’s ending and that people have strong opinions about it means it’s probably .... good? It set out to do a thing and it did it well imo, although I’d fully admit my expectations were subverted hard the first time around and I was a bit disappointed. It's an ending you read about and argue about on forums, and not an ending that's actually enjoyable to play through. I suspect the ending being way more popular here on SA then elsewhere is precisely for that reason.
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Mar 17, 2019 19:39
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Chairchucker posted:The MP in Baldur's Gate is pretty janky, took a lot of stuffing around for them to implement, and a ridiculously small percentage of players used it. It is not remotely worth their while implementing something similar. I assumed nearly everyone used multiplayer to duplicate stat buffing books, is this not the case?
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Mar 17, 2019 20:40
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's an ending you read about and argue about on forums, and not an ending that's actually enjoyable to play through. I suspect the ending being way more popular here on SA then elsewhere is precisely for that reason. I'd disagree but different strokes for different folks I guess  En Garde Motherfuckers posted:iirc none of the armor debuffs stack with each other, including stuff like the mace modal. Just did some testing and it does stack - which is amazing.
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Mar 17, 2019 20:55
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I thought all of the armor debuffs stacked. It's buffs, especially modals, that have stacking problems.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:07
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I know you genuinely think you've laid down the foundation for your argument, but you haven't. The game hasn't been designed to have Multiplayer, and it's likely not just a question to bolt some network code and UI on top of it to make it possible. We're talking about what could potentially be a refactor of some core code in a game that is already pretty fragile and criticized for having too many bugs. It's not gonna happen. I think you're overestimating how much thought was put into Baldur's Gates multiplayer component. I don't think having a system where another player controls an adventurer would be all that hard to do. I understand why they don't want to do it because it's still dev resources to do it and those resources could be better spent elsewhere if there isn't a demand for it, but I doubt creating a scaled down multiplayer mechanic like BG had would be all that difficult to do. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd be interested to hear Ropekid's thoughts on that.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:16
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I'm going to send you back to Chairchucker's post, given he linked Rope Kid's thoughts on the matter posted on these forums a while ago.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:22
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I'm going to send you back to Chairchucker's post, given he linked Rope Kid's thoughts on the matter posted on these forums a while ago. Surprising that it's that hard to do. It's not like you need to change any balance mechanics of the game. Multiplayer Baldur's Gate is the exact same as Single Player apart from it being multiplayer rather than single. None of the encounters, scripted events, or anything else change at all. I guess there's more going on there from a coding perspective than I expect but multiplayer BG never seemed that complicated. It's not like Divinity Original Sin for example where iirc each player can get different dialogue options to choose and they built out some in party player dialogues that happen.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:38
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Ginette Reno posted:Surprising that it's that hard to do. It's not like you need to change any balance mechanics of the game. Multiplayer Baldur's Gate is the exact same as Single Player apart from it being multiplayer rather than single. None of the encounters, scripted events, or anything else change at all. It's not like it's an afterthought in BG though, I mean there was a whole multiplayer lobby system and all sorts. Like I said earlier though I just assumed it already existed, I guess it didn't occur to me that it wouldn't. I'd never checked before.
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Mar 17, 2019 21:41
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Ginette Reno posted:Surprising that it's that hard to do. It's not like you need to change any balance mechanics of the game. Multiplayer Baldur's Gate is the exact same as Single Player apart from it being multiplayer rather than single. None of the encounters, scripted events, or anything else change at all. If you want to implement multiplayer, the engine will need to support all kinds of weird poo poo it didn't need to worry about with only one player running around. How will quests handle multiple PCs running around? What happens if you and your buddy run of in different directions? Normally, the engine only needs to worry about the area immediately around your character. With multiplayer the game's host needs to pay attention to the area around both players and there's a disconnect between stuff that needs to be in memory for things like AI pathing & collision, and the stuff that needs to be drawn on screen. You could do what Baldur's Gate did, which is not giving a gently caress and deciding to simply not deal with most of those issues. But if you allow only the host player to interact with the world and your multiplayer buddy is left as this ghost that can only do combat, then most reviewers and players everywhere will probably bitch about the mutiplayer being laughably dated and poorly implemented. And even then programmer's will still have the job of keeping the "state" of the world constant between the players so you can actually see eachother running around and combat will flow properly in real-time. Raygereio fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 22:29
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