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I miss pre-white power codex
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# ? Jul 18, 2016 10:32 |
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# ? Apr 18, 2024 08:47 |
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I have a theory that indie RPG developers deliberately abstain from hiring women and minorities so they can count on Codex support for their Kickstarters.
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# ? Jul 18, 2016 23:19 |
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That's too much of a conspiracy theory for me. Plus I believe that the Codex is the only outfit to have interviewed Carrie Patel, Obsidian's most prominent woman writer, and to have done so specifically because she works at Obsidian. Actually, I think I learned that she was a writer for PoE through that interview.
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 00:07 |
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X_Toad posted:That's too much of a conspiracy theory for me. Plus I believe that the Codex is the only outfit to have interviewed Carrie Patel, Obsidian's most prominent woman writer, and to have done so specifically because she works at Obsidian. Actually, I think I learned that she was a writer for PoE through that interview. The Codex is run by (mostly) rational people and has quite a few good and insightful posts, but they don't believe in any sort of moderation. Unsurprisingly, this turned it into a bit of an rear end in a top hat echo chamber.
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 01:08 |
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X_Toad posted:That's too much of a conspiracy theory for me. Plus I believe that the Codex is the only outfit to have interviewed Carrie Patel, Obsidian's most prominent woman writer, and to have done so specifically because she works at Obsidian. Actually, I think I learned that she was a writer for PoE through that interview. You are aware that you're replying to SNAKES N CAKES, right?
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 06:56 |
Basic Chunnel posted:People wanted BG1, they got BG1. They wanted a best-of the IE games. BG had the most conservative setting but it was Bioware's first rpg and succeeded in it's goal of recreating AD&D on a computer. PoE's setting maybe didn't even surpass BG1 with none of the mitigating context, and was way short of Torment or BG2. Ratios and Tendency fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Jul 19, 2016 |
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 07:57 |
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:You are aware that you're replying to SNAKES N CAKES, right?
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 09:22 |
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SNAKES is a posting hero
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 10:10 |
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PoE was much better than BG1 in every respect. I mean, there's no contest. I've been thinking about this lately, since I decided to play through BG1 again to see the new content those folks added recently, and having played PoE actually makes it a lot harder to slog through some of the worst parts. I mean, I'm playing a different edition, with eighteen years of improvements, engine upgrades, and bugfixes, and it's still not even close. The PoE writing is miles better. The companion characters in BG1 are paper-thin at best, with maybe one or two exceptions, which is absolutely not something that can be said about PoE's. The game systems are all universally better; AD&D 2E, as much affection as I have for it personally, is an absolute trainwreck of an RPG system even in tabletop, and translated to a computer it is just plain bad in the most terrible and jankiest of ways. And it is especially awful at lower levels, that is, the ones that BG1 covers. The reasons for that have, I think, been well-covered in lots of places (wildly disparate class usefulness, super swingy combat that relies far too much on feast-or-famine die rolls, the existence of instant death abilities, etc.). Conversations and actions in PoE actually have different outcomes based on all kinds of different factors, and there are choices that are not simple good/bad binaries (where the bad choice inevitably gets you kicked in the nuts in BG1). There are actually different areas with different styles and color palettes, whereas BG1 is just miles and miles of empty, samey wilderness with the occasional batch of random gibberlings or gnolls to remind you that you're still playing a game. Now, this is not to insult Bioware or the work they did - BG1 was revolutionary in a lot of ways, and PoE had the advantage of BG1 having already existed, so it could avoid a lot of its worst mistakes. But just comparing the final products? Of course PoE is better, when looked at without the veil of nostalgia. One could certainly have a discussion about whether PoE is better than BG2, and I think there are arguments to be made there, but BG2 also had a bigger budget and an established engine to work with, so we'll have to see how PoE2 stacks up to it. I don't expect Tyranny to be BG2 level either; it's more like a side-story, so it might be better compared with things like Icewind Dale.
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 12:29 |
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X_Toad posted:Actually, no. Is (s)he some kind of infamous fellow? I mean, that avatar is suspicious, but still...
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 17:23 |
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Ratios and Tendency posted:They wanted a best-of the IE games. BG had the most conservative setting but it was Bioware's first rpg and succeeded in it's goal of recreating AD&D on a computer. PoE's setting maybe didn't even surpass BG1 with none of the mitigating context, and was way short of Torment or BG2. * and as many have noted, Forgotten Realms is decidedly not a coherent setting
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 18:29 |
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X_Toad posted:Actually, no. Is (s)he some kind of infamous fellow? I mean, that avatar is suspicious, but still... I don't know if he's ever quite regained that level of posting but he pops up occasionally in game threads. If you don't like his gimmick he's still useful as a news aggregator. There might be alot more. I just know him from discussions I've seen him in.
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# ? Jul 19, 2016 18:39 |
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Snakes posts were cool when he made fun of DA2 or ME3 but not so much when he makes fun of my beloved PoE.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 05:38 |
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I don't like PoE but it isn't fun to laugh at in the same way as DA2. DA2's marketing and hype were hilarious, and the game was bad in some very silly ways. PoE is just extremely bland.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 07:50 |
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I thought it was lame that I had to basically "grind" out the money to get to the point where I'm finally "ready to start playing for real" to paraphrase something Lt Danger was talking about. This is actually a thing that bothers me about character progression in RPGs generally. I go through all that character creation stuff, ostensibly making all sorts of decisions about my character's profession and skills, and at the end of it I have a pretty bland and generic character anyway, because it's the beginning of the game and I don't really have much skill at anything. I spend the game longing for skilllups so that I can learn skills and spells which will allow me to do cool and interesting things, and when by the time I have a good range, there is not much cool and interesting left to do because the game is over. Does it have to be this way? What if we could start with good skills, and learn some more during the game, but have ones we don't use atrophy?
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 19:59 |
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Vargs posted:I don't like PoE but it isn't fun to laugh at in the same way as DA2. DA2's marketing and hype were hilarious, and the game was bad in some very silly ways. PoE is just extremely bland. Agreed on PoE being bland, by the time I got to the end I was glad I was done; just like finishing an unpleasant chore. Other thing that bugged me were the backer reward characters all over the place. Those things literally drained my enjoyment of the game every time I saw one.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 20:23 |
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Oh dear me posted:This is actually a thing that bothers me about character progression in RPGs generally. I go through all that character creation stuff, ostensibly making all sorts of decisions about my character's profession and skills, and at the end of it I have a pretty bland and generic character anyway, because it's the beginning of the game and I don't really have much skill at anything. I spend the game longing for skilllups so that I can learn skills and spells which will allow me to do cool and interesting things, and when by the time I have a good range, there is not much cool and interesting left to do because the game is over. This bothers me as well. Some developers go even worse than that and make it so you have to play through the same game 2 or 3 times before you can fully develop a character. A solution I've always thought would be good at combating this would be balancing games so characters reach full build maturity around like 1/3rd or 1/4th of the way through the 1st playthough, then from that point onward your advancement comes from gear to boost your power and/or give you cool extra abilities or procs or whatever. Just make leveling from then on increase your stats across the board so there can still be significant power differences between levels, but players still have access to complete and complex builds and playstyles early on.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 20:26 |
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Oh dear me posted:This is actually a thing that bothers me about character progression in RPGs generally. I go through all that character creation stuff, ostensibly making all sorts of decisions about my character's profession and skills, and at the end of it I have a pretty bland and generic character anyway, because it's the beginning of the game and I don't really have much skill at anything. I spend the game longing for skilllups so that I can learn skills and spells which will allow me to do cool and interesting things, and when by the time I have a good range, there is not much cool and interesting left to do because the game is over. Play mass effect 2
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 20:49 |
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Basic Chunnel posted:Play mass effect 2 I have done so and I don't know what point you're making. In ME2 there is only limited character creation and I start out with few skills.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 21:14 |
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Oh dear me posted:This is actually a thing that bothers me about character progression in RPGs generally. I go through all that character creation stuff, ostensibly making all sorts of decisions about my character's profession and skills, and at the end of it I have a pretty bland and generic character anyway, because it's the beginning of the game and I don't really have much skill at anything. I spend the game longing for skilllups so that I can learn skills and spells which will allow me to do cool and interesting things, and when by the time I have a good range, there is not much cool and interesting left to do because the game is over. I think there's a couple of ways to look at this, depending on what you prefer in a game. What I think Basic Chunnel is driving at is that ME2 has fairly shallow vertical progression, strong horizontal progression, hard counters and skill-based gameplay. Low-level skills aren't numerically useless compared to high-level skills, are a lot quicker to unlock, are still necessary in the rock-paper-scissors defences mechanic, and ultimately all skills are secondary to player action anyway. The end result is that Shepard in ME2 generally feels effective and build-complete very early on (I'd say after only a couple of missions - certainly before Horizon). Potentially all you would really need from the ME2 system would be for it to be larger and more developed - the core principles are what you're looking for. Perhaps, anyway.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 21:57 |
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I don't know, it seems to me that another way of looking at that is that characterization is simply very limited in Mass Effect. You can only be Shepard, and you can only ever learn one set of about 4 abilities (basically 'spells'), which you will get better at over the course of the game. True, there are a few different (but rigid) sets of 4 abilities to choose from, but this isn't a generous or flexible character building menu. And if the number of possible skills were greater, but you still started out with none, it would of course take a longer time to get them, just like other games.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 22:32 |
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Right, right, but I think this is a matter of implementation. It wouldn't significantly alter the core game system to have a larger skill pool, more frequent level-ups or more skill points on level-up, more starting skills, maybe a secondary character building mechanic like a feat system or a more developed weapon/armour system. I don't think ME2 gives you what you want, but it's leaning in the right direction. Compare to D&D/PoE, where vertical progression is infinite. You'll never finish building your character because there's always another level, a tougher monster, a stronger Fireball, another step on the progression treadmill. Level 1 characters feeling largely helpless is a core system feature, for whatever that's worth to you.
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# ? Jul 20, 2016 22:54 |
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Happens with itemization too for better or for worse.
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# ? Jul 21, 2016 04:43 |
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quote:Dev Diary #7 – Verse That dialogue snippet and that haircut just scream Bronze Age to me. Goes to show what having a few gifted historians in high places can do for a company.
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# ? Jul 27, 2016 21:13 |
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New short story, Trial By Iron, featuring Barik, the Archon of War and one of Lucky Luke's most common gags, the undertaker with the measuring tape (except that it's not an undertaker) : https://blog.tyrannygame.com/2016/08/05/trial-by-iron/
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# ? Aug 5, 2016 17:14 |
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It's time for a new dev diary, with a slight change of plans. Rather than talk to us about the Bronze Age-inspired setting, which Heins apparently didn't have the time to do, we get a companion presentation about Lantry, a scholar and mage who focuses on thrown daggers as well as healing, supporting and debilitating magic : https://blog.tyrannygame.com/2016/08/10/dev-diary-8-lantry/
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# ? Aug 10, 2016 16:39 |
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X_Toad posted:Actually, no. Is (s)he some kind of infamous fellow? I mean, that avatar is suspicious, but still... Snakes is this forum's saviour, and I would gladly lay down my to revive him should he fall to the nature of D&D. I loved PoE and I'm interested in this, but I want him to grace this thread with his presence. evilmiera fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Aug 11, 2016 |
# ? Aug 11, 2016 12:13 |
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Gamerevolution has a huge interview up:quote:Interview: Writers for Obsidian's Tyranny on Writing Evil and Surviving a Tyrannical World
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 16:56 |
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"Up" not really being true, they took it down quickly.
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 19:14 |
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For god's sake just show us something that's not brown
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 19:38 |
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There is lots of red in that article on the Scarlet Chorus. And the interview is up for real now : http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/interview-writers-for-obsidians-tyranny-on-evil-and-surviving-a-tyrannical-world
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# ? Aug 13, 2016 17:01 |
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Had the chance to help with a Tyranny interview. I know there's not exactly a lot of excitement on the SA forums, but I figure someone might be interested.
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# ? Aug 14, 2016 17:20 |
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I think we're all pretty interested. We're just hanging around waiting for substantial new data.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 08:26 |
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Definitely interested, but unlike Pillars I'm choosing to ignore any story or character information so I can actually go in fresh. Really only paying attention to release date updates.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 08:54 |
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Airfoil posted:Definitely interested, but unlike Pillars I'm choosing to ignore any story or character information so I can actually go in fresh.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 09:08 |
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Airfoil posted:Definitely interested, but unlike Pillars I'm choosing to ignore any story or character information so I can actually go in fresh. Pretty much this. Happy to look at systems stuff, but I want to stay as far away from the story as possible.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 14:14 |
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Seems like they're pursuing the same strategy as with Pillars of Eternity and not really releasing any plot info, only general setting information, so you should be covered.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 17:15 |
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X_Toad posted:I think you should at least read the short stories, if only to familiarize yourself a little with the world before going in. Nah. I want to see the setting explained in-game. If it doesn't do that well, that's a pretty serious design flaw.
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# ? Aug 15, 2016 18:08 |
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Further details. http://www.pcgamesn.com/tyranny/tyranny-spell-creation-artifact-weapons
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# ? Aug 24, 2016 03:42 |
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# ? Apr 18, 2024 08:47 |
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drawing inspiration from the black company and myth: the fallen lords is the first thing i've seen about this to really get my attention
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# ? Aug 24, 2016 04:14 |