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With TB, is heavy armor more attractive for your front line? Aspd decreases don't matter as much in TB, unless you're trying to get something off before another player in that turn instance, right?
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May 28, 2019 17:59
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2house2fly posted:The Port Maje section of that is really annoying because there's no way to subvert it. Maybe by killing the quest NPC there? I think that's the only thing I didn't try, because the one time I did it make Xoti hostile. Anyway if you're not siding with the RDC you need to just skip Maia's quest because doing it overrides any other possible ending for the area. Oh well! E: Beaten multiple times, oh well.
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May 28, 2019 18:05
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Fhqwhgads posted:With TB, is heavy armor more attractive for your front line? Aspd decreases don't matter as much in TB, unless you're trying to get something off before another player in that turn instance, right? Pretty much. If you don't care about when you go in a turn, then you can ignore initiative.
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May 28, 2019 18:26
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Fhqwhgads posted:With TB, is heavy armor more attractive for your front line? Aspd decreases don't matter as much in TB, unless you're trying to get something off before another player in that turn instance, right? I'd say use the lightest armor that keeps you survivable. Ime armor has the second biggest effect on turn order(beat by guns). And having more characters act early means you can more quickly kill a Target and change the action economy balance. Also the less NPCs acting, the faster rounds go.
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May 28, 2019 18:28
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Also apparently spell retargeting is no longer a thing, so casters low on speed run greater risk of being interrupted, or their AoE spells not hitting all their targets due to movement
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May 28, 2019 18:33
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SoggyBobcat posted:You can subvert it by making the RDC contact take the missive without dealing with the Huana spy first. I did that and got the same ending slide, it's bugged
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May 28, 2019 18:43
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2house2fly posted:I did that and got the same ending slide, it's bugged Obsidian confirmed that it's a 50/50 chance if all you do is convince her to take the missive without dealing with the stalker. The stalker has some dialogue options where you can cajole him into increasing his routine, which I believe has an effect on the percentile chance.
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May 28, 2019 18:50
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User posted:Every faction has coherent motivations. The game really is well written. And the combat mechanics are great too. I don't really understand why it didn't do better. i feel like everyone's nostalgia glasses for RTwP via the BG series got smacked off their face when they actually had to play PoE1. i don't mean that 1 was a bad game, i mean that people didn't accurately recall what it was like to actually play a RTwP game, and playing through 1 reminded them "oh poo poo RPGs have made a fuckload of progress in the last 15 years, RTwP is not as fun compared to contemporary game mechanics". so everybody was super hype for a spiritual successor to BG when 1 came out, then people played 1 and didn't particularly cotton to RTwP, and when 2 was released the memory of RTwP sucking was more recent and it kept people away. i also feel like they kind of got caught in a catch 22 with the design, where it was like "okay we're building a niche RPG using niche mechanics that a relatively small population of gamers even want any more. we're also crowdfunding the game. so if the new game isn't 99.99% identical to what came before, the niche gamers won't fund the original development, and the game can't get made. however; if the new game is 99.99% identical to what came before, the game is going to struggle to attract new players that don't give a poo poo about legacy mechanics, except the new gamers aren't likely to crowdfund the game, and the game can't get made. gently caress"
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May 28, 2019 19:08
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I think they did plenty to innovate and modernize the genre while still keeping to the spirit, it's not like they just made bg3, unlike say wasteland 2 being just fallout with somewhat better graphics.
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May 28, 2019 19:29
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i feel like everyone's nostalgia glasses for RTwP via the BG series got smacked off their face when they actually had to play PoE1. i don't mean that 1 was a bad game, i mean that people didn't accurately recall what it was like to actually play a RTwP game, and playing through 1 reminded them "oh poo poo RPGs have made a fuckload of progress in the last 15 years, RTwP is not as fun compared to contemporary game mechanics". so everybody was super hype for a spiritual successor to BG when 1 came out, then people played 1 and didn't particularly cotton to RTwP, and when 2 was released the memory of RTwP sucking was more recent and it kept people away. Which specific contemporary gameplay features do you think are better? I think Real time with pause is kind of inherently lovely, but that Obsidian did a good job of updating it. I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and it highlights the design improvements it made. Original Sin 2 was a hit, and had turn based mechanics. But I remember when turn based was considered inherently old school and archaic while real time with pause was the new poo poo.
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May 28, 2019 19:45
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Avalerion posted:I think they did plenty to innovate and modernize the genre while still keeping to the spirit, it's not like they just made bg3, unlike say wasteland 2 being just fallout with somewhat better graphics. for sure, but RTwP is RTwP and that functionality didn't change (until the final patch for 2). it's like the transition from demon's souls to dark souls 3 - there were QoL improvements and minor system tweaks and various gameplay enhancements, but the underlying mechanics of how you interact with the world and what your character can and cannot do didn't really change. if you didn't like how your character moved and handled in DeS you probably aren't going to like how your character moves and handles in the sequels. in the same way, PoE1 was an improvement over the BG series in so many ways, but the core system mechanic of RTwP didn't change, and if you only kind of liked that 15 years ago because that was the only game in town, and now time has passed and you've found other systems you enjoyed more, going back to RTwP might suck, even if the game is otherwise cool, because engaging with an RPG via RTwP is pretty dang clunky. compare this to D:OS and its sequel, which were vastly inferior to PoE in terms of plot and story, but played turn-based out the box and both have been critical and financial successes. my point is that PoE1 (and 2) still using RTwP as the primary system interaction was a bigger hamstring than it might seem like at first
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May 28, 2019 19:48
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Freaking Crumbum posted:for sure, but RTwP is RTwP and that functionality didn't change (until the final patch for 2). That makes sense. I never played the Gold Box games, but I think the dominant RPG with turn based combat around the time Baldur's Gate came out was Fallout. And Fallout combat was really bad. Not because it was turn based, but because it was finicky and simplistic. Larian deserves a lot of credit for figuring out how to make snappy, complex turn based system. I love the Pillars series, but I think Obsidian somewhat constrained themselves by making a Baldur's Gate spiritual successor. They seem to have really smart system designers and I'd like to see what they could do if they want hog wild with an isometric, non-action game.
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May 28, 2019 19:53
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prometheusbound2 posted:Which specific contemporary gameplay features do you think are better? I think Real time with pause is kind of inherently lovely, but that Obsidian did a good job of updating it. I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and it highlights the design improvements it made. if i'm in charge of ranking RPG systems, it would go Live Action > Turn Based (in all its myriad forms) > RTwP. too many successful RPGs have come and gone between BG2 and PoE1 that no longer used RTwP, and making RTwP the primary system interaction was a bad choice IMO. the problem is that the entire PoE1 marketing blitz was based on the nostalgia people had for the BG series, and i don't think most people accurately remembered how much of a chore RTwP was to actually play. like, there's a reason RTwP was mostly abandoned by PC RPGs and it's not just an arbitrary thing. The Witcher / Dark Souls / Skyrim / the new Fallouts / D:OS 1&2 / Harebrained Shadowrun(s) / etc. ranged from decently to wildly successful and none of them used RTwP. all i'm doing is noticing a similar thread among games that sold very well and calling out that a common element they all share is absent in the PoE series. most people's remembery of what it was like to play RTwP was more fun that what it's actually like to play RTwP.
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May 28, 2019 19:54
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The dragon age series used rtpw and all three of them did fine. While turn based certainly didn't hurt dos, I think the loud and colorful setting and shallow but flashy character systems did more for its success.
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May 28, 2019 20:02
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Nasgate posted:Re: class stuff. I miss having ranged talents on other classes This I'll give you, Rangers were the weakest class design-wise and it's a shame that they stole all the ranged stuff. Spreading around a couple generic ranged talents and maybe giving the other martial classes one or two unique ranged passives would have been cool. Also I generally prefer RtwP over turn-based unless you're getting down in the weeds with cover mechanics ala X-com or massive buff/debuff-fests like SMT. However I am a broke-brained weirdo so my approval is probably not something game makers should look for.
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May 28, 2019 20:09
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but didn't build flexibility in the first game boil down to "pick the bonus elemental damage feat that supports the damage type you do most?" The universal talents were all nickle-and-dime garbage you never spent a valuable talent point on or universally good for all characters in a broad archetype, like the baby sneak attack for physical damage dealers. I've only ever picked elemental talents on three characters even on PotD (Hiravias, Pallegina, my pc paladin on a vet paladin run that bored me out of retrying it on PotD) and those plus weapon focus are honestly the worst of the lot, otoh hold the line was pretty nice to make a Paladin or Chanter an acceptable off-tank even without a shield, something that now requires a full blown multiclass (or heaven forbid you want a musketeer paladin without investing into ranger). If anything the elemental and weapon focus talents were the most extreme cases of this poo poo. A lot could have been done to rework multiclass talents without doing what the system ended up being (i.e. a messy 2 hours of choice paralysis because there's now over 120 class options none of which are actually that well documented). At least to me deadfire felt like it required vastly more system mastery than 1, where half the time just remembering that identical modals don't stack seemed broadly sufficient. edit: Also a turn-based POE1 would have done even worse thanks to the ridiculous amounts of trash. Have fun needing 5 hours to finish the prologue. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 20:28 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 20:21
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D:OS2 succeeded because it drew together multiple markets that might not've touched otherwise. It's an RPG with the option to either play a predefined character or a custom character, a bright, colorful, fully 3D environment, a familiar high fantasy world with just enough unique about it to differentiate it, and marketable cast of visually readable characters. Deadfire is a game that lacks predefined origin characters, uses a more realistic setting with fixed maps (which, while gorgeous, could potentially read as being "low rent" to the average consumer), takes place in a very uncommon setting (Polynesia/Caribbean-inspired fantasy), and has a core group that, while not bad, don't make for inspired marketing. Remember, when it comes to direct sales (versus actual playtime), first impressions are everything. I'd be lying if I said I didn't pick up D:OS2 because of the promise of turn-based combat, but I question whether the majority of direct sales are predicated on people scrutinizing the core combat systems versus whether the overall presentation and premise grabs their attention.
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May 28, 2019 20:22
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So I was right earlier, scaling in this is hosed. I was doing the Sealed Fate quest which is at or below my level according to the journal and when I run into the ambush all the enemies are 3-4 levels higher than me. Well time to quickload not gonna waste my time with that. Out of curiosity I turn off scaling, and guess what? Now they're at my exact level!
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May 28, 2019 21:00
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Vermain posted:Obsidian confirmed that it's a 50/50 chance if all you do is convince her to take the missive without dealing with the stalker. The stalker has some dialogue options where you can cajole him into increasing his routine, which I believe has an effect on the percentile chance.
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May 28, 2019 21:02
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Gobblecoque posted:So I was right earlier, scaling in this is hosed. I was doing the Sealed Fate quest which is at or below my level according to the journal and when I run into the ambush all the enemies are 3-4 levels higher than me. Well time to quickload not gonna waste my time with that. Out of curiosity I turn off scaling, and guess what? Now they're at my exact level! Yeah, what is up with this and how does scaling actually work? It's frustrating that half the quests in my journal are "at-level" and when I get there most of the time I encounter monsters 1-4+ levels above me. Are there "elite" monsters that always scale to your level+x? I can see that making some sense for x=1 or x=2 but I assume that's not what's going on when my level 8 quest throws a level 14 monster at me and I'm level 10.
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May 28, 2019 21:07
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IIRC the difficulty setting affects the scaling. So they scale higher on PotD and Veteran
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May 28, 2019 21:10
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MMF Freeway posted:IIRC the difficulty setting affects the scaling. So they scale higher on PotD and Veteran Even when I was running normal and without level scaling there were still some discrepancies between quest level and monster level. Like Cornett's Call is a level 8 quest but the monster at the end is level 12? So I think the baseline quest levels are just wrong and adding (apparently variable) level scaling on top of that just exacerbates it.
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May 28, 2019 21:18
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Vermain posted:I'd say my strongest complaint about turn based thus far is that it just takes way, way too goddamn long on higher difficulty settings. PotD throwing three grubs, four worms, and four Earth Blights at you at once is reasonable in RTwP, but the same fight takes forever in TB as a consequence of everything needing to take a turn + everyone's DPS being a hell of a lot lower due to the changes to action speed. You can sneak by a lot of poo poo, but not everything, and it becomes immensely wearying trying to fight your way out of every scrap when each battle takes 5+ minutes at a minimum. This is why RWTP is cool, I like huge amounts of enemies getting thrown at me on occasion. RWTP handles it with aplomb but turn-based just gets completely bogged down. Everyone's all turn-based this and that, but DOS, Shadowrun, Torment, Wasteland, all the revival RPGs went the turn-based route and I vastly prefer playing POE1/2 to all of them. Granted I only tried DOS1, but that combat system was real flashy and showed its full hand in the first 8-12 hours, and then I felt like I saw everything there was to see. I feel everyone's talking about some ideal turn-based system that exists in their own heads rather than what's been out there in RPG land.
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May 28, 2019 21:22
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Scorchy posted:This is why RWTP is cool, I like huge amounts of enemies getting thrown at me on occasion. RWTP handles it with aplomb but turn-based just gets completely bogged down. Since I micromanage RtwP for every character, I find the opposite to be true.
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May 28, 2019 21:23
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MMF Freeway posted:IIRC the difficulty setting affects the scaling. So they scale higher on PotD and Veteran That's a baffling design decision if that's true. You get an enemy that's 4 levels higher than you at that point they've nearly doubled the bonus accuracy/defenses they get from being on potd in the first place. That's not what I signed up for.
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May 28, 2019 21:33
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The giant grub is a boss fight that is supposed to be a bit above you, so I t's scaling to stay above you.
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May 28, 2019 21:42
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Yeah, bosses scaling above you is mostly okay. Mobs like the digsite boar scaling (to higher level than the drake even) is incredibly eh Also turn-based gets a bit annoying in small confined areas; a bunch of fights in the old city become teeth grinding when the game thinks distinct groups are close enough for their ai to join in the fray especially below level 8 (e.g. the caves with the earth blights)
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May 28, 2019 22:08
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Khizan posted:The giant grub is a boss fight that is supposed to be a bit above you, so I t's scaling to stay above you. People say this fight is hard but it's the easiest fight in the game to cheese. Upgraded Gouging Strike does damage forever, the grub can't move, and there's a wall right there. Stealth rogue in -> open with gouging strike -> run away -> wait.
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May 28, 2019 22:10
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You can also just not fight it. Stealth to the north wall, open it up and grab all the loot.
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May 28, 2019 23:45
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frajaq posted:heh... we like nitty-gritty realistic GOT-books endings around here partner... no time for that fantasy Good Ending bullshit This article has some interesting observations on sociological vs character driven storytelling: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones. I think Deadfire was trying to tell a sociological story, and I think that's really cool, but there are a lot of headwinds for that in an Infinity Engine style character driven CRPG. Edit: Also I really like Deadfire RTwP, but that's because I'm not afraid of building my own AI behaviors. That means that 90% of my input is positioning, which makes it satisfyingly tactical. For that you need this though: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/88 User fucked around with this message at 02:54 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 01:19
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User posted:This article has some interesting observations on sociological vs character driven storytelling: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones. whoever wrote this article has their head so far up their rear end they can see the sun shining out of their own mouth hole jesus gently caress that's impenetrable
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May 29, 2019 02:02
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The White Dragon posted:whoever wrote this article has their head so far up their rear end they can see the sun shining out of their own mouth hole jesus gently caress that's impenetrable You realize it's sci-am not salon or vox or something right? It's not impenetrable it's just written for a triple digit IQ audience.
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May 29, 2019 02:37
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Lmao "the writing being objectively worse is just superficial" is such a galaxy brain take, I couldn't continue.
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May 29, 2019 02:40
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User posted:You realize it's sci-am not salon or vox or something right? It's not impenetrable it's just written for a triple digit IQ audience. i realize it's written for Scientific American but please understand, this person needs an editor more than Grieiving Mother needed an editor Fur20 fucked around with this message at 02:55 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 02:53
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There's some tryhard purple prose it's true, but the sociological vs character driven distinction actually is interesting.
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May 29, 2019 02:59
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I feel like it articulates pretty well the appeal I find in the story of this game, as well as in the first Pillars and New Vegas before it. The original Fallout games too, come to think of it. Those games are always less about you /your character, and more about the imagined world you're in, how it operates and what makes it tick(which can count against them- "I don'tcare about my character" is both the most common criticism I see of these games and by far the hardest one for me to get my head around). When I first played Fallout 2 a few years back I was prepared for South Park and Monty Python references and The Enclave, because people talked about them a lot. I was surprised that I'd never seen anyone mention the three-way tug of war going on for control of the wasteland, and I found that aspect of the game pretty interesting. I can imagine having a controllable player character as a big obstacle to telling a sociological story- the player can't be assumed to be subject to the same pressures and structures of the world as a Robb Stark or Stringer Bell (and can't die 60% of the way into the story) so the idea that sociological storytelling could function as a way to understand the world just... doesn't work. so it makes sense that you play as a drifter in these games, and also that you amass money, fame, and what have you. These things, at least to some degree, free your character from the constraints of the world and allow you to experience a sociological story as an observer, in the same way as being a celebrated game writer with a lot of money in the bank allowed Chris Avellone to start shooting his mouth off about Obsidian without needing to worry about where his next paycheck is coming from. I still think Pillars 1 was a brave attempt at both doing that sociological story where you experienced the setting as an observer, combined with a personal focused story about your character needing to save their soul, but I wonder if those two styles of storytelling aren't fundamentally incompatible in the medium of video game. You can either see the Mojave through your character's eyes, or join your character's quest to save their dad, but maybe not both. Also the idea that a lack of sociological stories might have made people ill-prepared to deal with various realities of the modern day makes me remember that thing I keep meaning to read about the CIA weaponizing creative writing classes against the soviets 2house2fly fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 03:19
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Pillars of Eternity II - Other Games are a CIA Psyop
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May 29, 2019 03:32
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2house2fly posted:I can imagine having a controllable player character as a big obstacle to telling a sociological story- the player can't be assumed to be subject to the same pressures and structures of the world as a Robb Stark or Stringer Bell (and can't die 60% of the way into the story) so the idea that sociological storytelling could function as a way to understand the world just... doesn't work. I disagree. A game like New Vegas - which is, at its core, fundamentally concerned with societies and how their respective ideologies drive them - is at its strongest when it's asking you, the player, to choose between one of several options that have major ramifications on the surrounding world. Even if you don't have any strong ideological ties to the New California Republic or Caesar's Legion specifically, the game is still implicitly asking you the question, "Is a strong tyranny better than a corrupt democracy?" Even if you're roleplaying your character, you still have to reason through why one particular option is better than the other, and that sort of thinking is what a sociological story is ultimately striving for. Think about how many pages of the New Vegas thread were consumed by people arguing over which faction was the "best" option; hell, even this thread probably has several dozen pages at a minimum devoted to discussing colonialism, pre-industrial societies suddenly being thrust into modernity, the staying power of societal customs, the difficulty in transitioning power between classes, and so on.
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May 29, 2019 03:33
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I think there's a false dichotomy between psychological and sociological story-telling presented. They are at least interdependent. Wholly sociological story-telling becomes a dry and often shallow track. This is why 1984, Animal Farm, and the works of Ayn Rand are poor works of literature (their political viewpoints notwithstanding). The characters and themes are archetypes and mouthpieces for the writer. The best sociological storytelling features vivid characters with richly developed psychological motiviations. Ned Stark's downfall isn't just because of power politics in King's Landing--it's because of his own virtues and vices as they interact with that power structure. The article also cites The Wire as an example of sociological storytelling, and that's an obvious example. But its a story that succeeds because its also richly develops the psychology of its characters. The Expanse, Mad Men, and The Sopranos also offer strong sociological stories driven by the inner lives of its characters (the smartest Marxist critiques I've seen are in Mad Men and The Wire, and I've read plenty of Marx and Habermas and Baudrillard--I also don't think much of Marxism). Likewise, the most psychological driven stories examine how their characters react to sociological pressures--see, the work of Virginia Woolf and gender roles, Breaking Bad and the pressures of American capitalism and ideas of power, Tolstoy and the role of religion, aristocracy, and...gender roles again. I'm not sure that any video game has had great psychological storytelling, and don't know that it's possible in the RPG context. But that's fine--video games play a different storytelling niche than more passive forms of media. I think the issue with Deadfire and also New Vegas is that they exhibit unusual nuance in their storytelling. Nuance for video game, that is. New Vegas presents a faction that engages in rape, slavery, and genocide. Their foils...charge taxes and have corruption issues. But because most video games feature demons vs. angels. If you're lucky, you might get Reapers vs. Cerebrus or Darkspawn vs. Grey(not WHITE!) Wardens. Likewise, in Deadfire there are clear themes that colonialism is destructive, but the game doesn't indulge in Noble Savage mythology or depict all characters from the colonizing factions as rapacious pillagers. The internet--and not the portions of the internet that talk about video games--generally can't handle that kind of discussion, and much foolish discussion ensues. I don't know to what extent that affected Deadfire's sales. I am so very tired of pseudo-European Middle Ages settings, but I don't know what the mass market wants. Obsidian is one of the few developers I'd trust to make a game without European influences that wouldn't end up as a disrespectful caricature (I'm cringe to think of what the Far Cry writing staff would do). I would think that pirates would be a good selling point, but apparently not. It's very possible that developers are just facing an intensely saturated market.
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May 29, 2019 03:35
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The factions of New Vegas aren't meant to be equal shades of gray for you to pick between, regardless of how much Hegelian Dialectic Caesar uses to coach his personal goals. Caesar's legion are the bad guys, and if you side with them it's because you want to be the villain in a video game rather than out of a misguided Darwinist belief that they'll ultimately lead the wasteland to prosperity. The sociological question comes down to whether you believe the immortal technocrat or your carefully curated anarchy is ultimately a stronger choice than neo-America. The same goes for Deadfire, really. People will go to bat for any of the factions, but I don't think anyone genuinely believes that Alvari or Furrante's flavor of colonialism ends up serving anyone but themselves.
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