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Cinnamon Bear posted:I never made it past the tutorial for Pillars of Eternity and the voice acting was so bad my ears began to bleed as fantasy Welsh scrabble names were struggled to be pronounced by the voice actors. Glaaaaaaanfaaaaerythwyth I'm hoping we'll get a more exciting story and setting but I don't think the base mechanics are going to change, unfortunately.
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Jan 26, 2017 12:16
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Pretty relieved they're starting over from Level 1 - good chance they can rejig the system as a whole then.Raygereio posted:I'm be more worried about balance. I'm honestly struggling to come up with an example of multiclassing where the multi-classed result wasn't either overpowered, or underwhelming. I think the only way multiclassing can work is by trading class features - swap sneak attack for spell levels or Faith & Conviction for Carnage. D&D's pseudo-point buy just doesn't work at all.
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Jan 26, 2017 20:15
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So glad of the 5 party members limit, such a sensible design choice. If you think about it, the IE games only ever really had 2-3 proper party members anyway.Dolash posted:I sort of hate to keep bringing Tyranny up, but it seems appropriate as the 'little brother' to Pillars and the one they made between PoE 1 and the now-upcoming PoE 2, and it's really relevant to both your points. The second point I agree completely because the strongest part of Tyranny was Act 1 where you really do have a (generous) timer and there's a great sense of dynamism as you do things pertaining to a siege and the siege actually progresses as you go. The start to Pillars is sort of ambling though and doesn't really feel like a call to action, I can get all the way to the keep without feeling sure about who my character is or why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't think it's really so much to do with high/low fantasy, quest timers or 'modern gamers and their fancy cutscenes' (yikes!) as with the writing style and strength of the underlying concepts. I think I had basically the same reaction as you, and my take is: Dragon Age is a big, brash, bold series with broad character archetypes in big set pieces fighting for bigger dramatic stakes. Lots of simple, straightforward plot hooks thrust into your face wherever you go: zombie-orcs, mages and demons, oppressive religious fanatics, oppressed elves, empire of satanists etc. It's all a bit stupid but it does grab your attention. The Witcher is tightly focused on its characters and relationships, offers genuine moral ambiguity with decision points that significantly change the plot and rings with the authenticity of a specific setting (medieval Poland) with clear influences from the source material (Polish folklore and mythology). For something derided as "crude" and "gritty" it does a good job of evoking emotions in the audience. Tyranny has a clear high concept premise (what if you were fantasy Judge Dredd?) with apparently very reactive plot progression and literally larger-than-life characters that act as the backbone of the story. The big and weird ideas at its heart are front-and-centre throughout. The writing is quite janky at the best of times but again there's a strong concept lying underneath. Pillars is very muted and understated in its writing, which is fine except it's also paired with a very generic Euro-American Renaissance Faire fantasy heartbreaker setting where the major twists are "guns" and "magic as science", and a murky mystery story with distant characters and a thinly-spread plot which doesn't cohere until a few moments before the end. It's a very unfortunate combination of often external factors that leave Pillars worse off than Dragon Age, even though Dragon Age is aggressively quite dumb. The best point of comparison is the Icewind Dale games, which are similarly minimalist but have a more unusual setting (frozen frontier littered with ruins and monsters) and simpler plots that can be left idling in the background while the player explores weird and cool micro-stories like the Severed Hand, the Black Raven Monastery, the Vale of Shadows, Dorn's Deep etc. Basic Chunnel's Cera Sumat is a great example of that sort of thing. I'm warming up to PoE2 for much the same reasons, actually: fantasy South Pacific pirates is a pretty fresh setting and the plot hook of tracking down your wayward god/soul sounds like a lot of fun while giving us a lot of time to explore all sorts of sub-plots.
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Jan 27, 2017 11:35
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I think Tyranny suffers for Act 3 being mostly exposited to the player by a Fatebinder (twice!), rather than developing organically from the Archons' interactions - in turn perhaps the result of Act 2 being faction drudgework mostly revolving around your Conquest choices, delivered piecemal for maximum options, leaving little room for developing the current political situation in the Tiers.
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Jan 27, 2017 13:24
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oswald ownenstein posted:I just don't buy the easier to balance 5 than 6 argument- show or explain to me how dropping to 5 suddenly makes everything click together from a balance standpoint on any given encounter 1) Action economy - 6 party members can be doing 6 different things at any one moment. This is particularly important when the challenge in most tactical combat games is in managing/defending against the actions of more numerous weaker enemies - the more party members you have, the more actions you have to counter what the enemy is doing, the less pressure on the player, the easier the game. 2) Strategic resources - extra party members mean more HP, spells, abilities, equipment etc. for players to bring to each fight. The more resources in play, the more granular the results, the harder it is to strike that balance between exhausting life-or-death battles and easy encounters that don't touch the sides. 3) Predictability - a party that doubles up on crowd control is going to play differently to one that doubles up on tanking or DPS. The smaller the party, the more consistent the expected line-up, the easier it is to design encounters with unique flairs that won't stonewall or completely fall over to a player who accidentally took Extra Wizards. But I think the biggest factor is avoiding clutter and info overload. PoE only sort of gets away with it because it's so easy. Limiting design space is actually really important!
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Jan 27, 2017 15:27
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Zore posted:No one's openly talked about it but from some things that have been said it seems Avellone is pissy that a bunch of his content and ideas were cut in PoE and he just seems to be on a different wavelength from everyone there now. Think there's more to it than that - I heard Avellone was heading up a game that ended up getting axed along with his PoE stuff, and it sounds like it was part of larger internal politicking as well. Maybe his Kickstarter superstar status played a role in it too. It's weird to see this anti-Avellone backlash, though. For someone so pissy and bitter, he seems happy to retweet and promote Obsidian stuff like PoE2 and Apocalypse Now.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:41
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oswald ownenstein posted:I get all that, I just don't think you're gaining much 'balancability' out of lowering to 5, but you're losing more flexibility in encounter design because now you have to assume everyone has only 1 tank. I don't think you can have it both ways. Either having five party members significantly changes the encounter design or it doesn't - it's nonsense to say it won't affect the balance but will affect the encounter content, since they're the same thing! It's also weird to argue that you can no longer take Sagani or Kana because you're stuck reserving a space for "X" (???). Surely the answer here is to make Sagani and Kana more fun/useful to take with you. I'm not sure what PoE encounter design has to do with it, since PoE's encounter design (such that it was) was designed for six party members and not five. PoE2 may well make classes more capable at their roles to make up for the reduced number of actions/resources available. "Five" is obviously a compromise number between the traditional D&D "3 casters + 3 perma-summons" and the more modern evolution of tank/DPS/buff/debuff. It's not going to be a massive change either way, but I think it will help tighten up the gameplay. Walrus Pete posted:I'm surprised how many people care so strongly about the party size change. It really doesn't seem very limiting to me at all. It's a shibboleth for "Infinity Engine games".
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Jan 27, 2017 17:17
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My power fantasy!
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Jan 28, 2017 00:34
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I hope there is a per-rest system, but only if there's a strict time limit on the main quest and game as a whole.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:05
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Cool, death to vancian casting then
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Jan 28, 2017 21:13
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In all seriousness, *says something really creepy*
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Jan 28, 2017 21:22
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Per-rest is bad because it's meaningless. It's like one of those incremental "clicker" games - click the spells to make baddies die, then click the rest button to refresh the spells, repeat for 60+ hours. Who wants that? D&D had per-rest, but D&D also (originally) had extensive time-keeping - active or wandering monsters, calendar events, rival adventuring parties etc. A hard-failure time limit is an acceptable substitute. Better yet, Wizards/Priests/Druids could probably do with a bit of a redesign anyway. They feel very similar in how they play, and the Grimoire mechanic just never really went anywhere.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:17
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I am ready to ascend to the next level of RPG tactical combat.
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Jan 28, 2017 23:19
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Basic Chunnel posted:they're basically short drow I think (hope?) you're forgetting how much nerds want to gently caress drow
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Jan 29, 2017 00:47
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Captain Oblivious posted:If you think Druids play like Wizards or Priests you are really loving bad at playing Druids. gently caress off. I'm talking about the basic way in which their spells function, not their gimmicks - all three are Vancian casters with the same (weak) spell rationing gameplay. By contrast Chanters, Ciphers and Monks are all mana casters with very different ways of generating mana. Grimoires could do with unique bonuses, as suggested earlier, and greatly reduced capacity so I can't just load one up with all the good spells and leave it be. Maybe then I'd have to actually manage my Wizard's spells and swap between books once in a while.
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Jan 29, 2017 07:06
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Captain Oblivious posted:Then say what you mean next time. That you, personally, think that the way their spells are derived overrides all interests is fine but to say that they play the same is objectively false. I did - I said that they feel very similar, not that they "play the same", because they are casters that use the same casting system. Spiritshifting is hardly unique, either, since you can also make a muscle wizard quite easily. Why are you being such a prick about this?
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Jan 29, 2017 09:40
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I dunno, I think you're overstating how important front-lining is to a Druid and how meaningful a difference that is to gameplay. The most playtime I had with a Druid was in PotD, so the "front line" was pretty nebulous anyway, but the actual decisions I made with her were pretty much the same as those I made with Aloth in my first run - assess encounter strength, pick 1-3 spells, target AoE for max effect and fire away, repeat until rest.
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Jan 29, 2017 12:51
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2house2fly posted:Why was he rude to you after you told him to gently caress off? Bizarre. Hey, he was the one getting bitchy first. ProfessorCirno posted:Maybe you're bad at using druids? Like, all your arguments appear to be "Druids are fundamentally the same as wizards. I know this because I always played my druid the same way I played my wizard." And like, sure. That's your call. But don't come whining about it when you're the one who did it that way. It was a triple crown run so I can't have been that awful. More to the point, I was playing the Druid in this superior, unique best practice way, and it still didn't feel that different from playing a Wizard - same old nuke-dropping, just from a closer distance. The complaint wasn't that it felt weak, it was that it felt the same. I had a Chanter and a Cipher in the same party and they both felt more interesting to play because they were more distinct from one another, even though they've actually kinda got the same core mechanic. The Chanter was a buffing off-tank who would occasionally bust out some crowd-control or summoning, while the Cipher was a more active caster with more variable mana gain and a (weirder) offensive spell list. Both required different tactical manoeuvring as a result of their strategic-level differences. By contrast Wizard and Druid felt like flip sides of the same caster coin, with similar tactical uses as a result. e: like the specific criticism here is that wizards and druids both share a role (mob nuker) and share basic core mechanics (per-rest spells). the suggestion is to play up the existing grimoire mechanic to make them more distinct in play Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 29, 2017 |
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Jan 29, 2017 18:04
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Tomorrows Ace posted:I do remember reading and enjoying the novelisation though so what the hell do i know? Jesus Christ. I think you're mischaracterising Torment. It's a trifle overrated and overdone in parts but it's not remotely "nihilistic", nor as twee as Tim Burton's writing. Its main strength is that it's properly fantasy, unlike quite a lot of other RPGs.
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Jan 30, 2017 11:02
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That's existentialism, though, not nihilism.
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Jan 30, 2017 11:24
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"Twee" is "excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty or sentimental", which I'd say is a fair description. Where the heck is Teletubbies coming from?? Tomorrows Ace mentioned "edgy teen nihilism", which I took to mean writing that gloried in failure, loss and grief for shock effect - you know, everyone dies, the bad guy wins, nothing of value is accomplished etc. etc. Perhaps they were referring to Sartre though.
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Jan 30, 2017 11:34
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Under the vegetable posted:Some people got their nihilism from Sartre as teens, some got theirs from end of evangelion. Who am I to guess? Now I'm wondering how to read Torment as an existentialist text, given the conceits of the setting, the inauthenticity of the main quest and the conclusion that there is a natural order and a cosmic balance that The Nameless One must set right with an eternity of suffering in Literal Hell. I mean, I get where you're coming from, but... Avalerion posted:What was wrong with the second city? Both cities feel a bit undercooked in things to do and sights to see, and pacing-wise Twin Elms pops up at a really inconvenient point in the plot. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 13:50
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Getting steadily more excited for Deadfire! It's like everything I ever asked for is coming true!ProfessorCirno posted:There are "fixes." The one ropekid is suggesting is similar to a later 3e supplement, Tome of Battle, where previous levels in another class count as "half" towards your martial class (though in this case it counts as 1/3). Except this introduces yet another new problem - taking a level in rogue at level 2 makes you, broadly speaking, somewhere between a level 1 rogue and a level 2 rogue. But taking that single level of rogue at level 10 makes you a level 4 rogue. And sure, that kinda fixes one problem with 3e style multiclassing, but now it unleashes an equally hellish problem where you need to be exact on when you take your rogue level, and how multiclassing at different TIMES can radically change your general power level. So yeah. there are "fixes." But none of them actually fix the myriad of problems. As I understand it, it doesn't matter when exactly you take the multiclass level - a Rogue 1/Fighter 1 would have 4 Guile metalevels and a Rogue 1/Fighter 9 would have 12 Guile metalevels and this will always be true whether they took the Rogue level at Level 2, Level 5, Level 10 or whenever.
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Feb 2, 2017 11:02
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The fundamental issue is that long-term strategic resource management is incompatible with low-stakes go-anywhere-do-anything exploration.
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Feb 2, 2017 12:45
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I personally thought the soft restrictions that came with the resting system were enough to naturally lead the average player to play 'as intended', even though in practice they could be easily circumvented. This happened because there was enough tedium tied to the idea of having to go back to a town to buy more camping supplies, that I felt (and I've seen plenty of players going down that path) compelled to avoid that, plus the distribution of camping supplies was pretty liberal. Insurrectionist posted:E: And yeah, as a rest-spammer in IE games I rarely ended up resting in PoE on Hard, as I noted before every time I did rest and went down to 1/2 supplies, I never did so again until I restocked (either by finding some in the area or going to an inn/store). And at no point during the game did I abandon my progress through an area to go back and stock up or anything. It worked perfectly for me at least. I think PoE has other aspects in its design that make combat rather 'loose', which in turns mitigates the need to rest: levelling and encounter scaling; the emphasis on soft counters; trash mob encounter design; even the way the per-rest resources are deployed (the Health/Endurance gap, the way PoE Vancian casters all work like D&D Sorcerers). The resting system 'works' because it's never put under any pressure. By contrast PotD/Triple Crown stacks the numbers against the player enough to make rest-spam tempting. Similarly, the IE games required more liberal resting due to more rigorous encounter scaling and a hard counter spell system. But the actual charge is that PoE/IE Vancian casting isn't long-term strategic management, because it isn't - there are no high-level boundaries on resources, so the strategic "costs" are too low, so there is no need to manage resources. You can rearrange numbers between spells left, camping supplies, gold coins, hours played and personal frustration, but you're never in any danger of those numbers hitting a hard limit and entering a fail state. The aim is to imitate D&D and evoke the feel of "camping in the wilderness" rather than test the player; in this respect, it's not a game, it's a toy. All the classes already have per-rest resources (HP) but I imagine the Empower mechanic works more like potions than it does spells - it's a limited boon that enhances actions for spike damage/effect when you really need it, rather than the basic way you interact with the game and if you run out then you're useless for the foreseeable future. If so, it'd have limited impact on the design. Avalerion posted:Just brainstorming here but I'd like if each caster played differently. Like... Random ideas, but: in a different kind of game you could make Wizards into crafter-casters, like Ultima (thinking especially of Necromancers and Sorcerers from Ultima 8). Priests could have their spell list split into encounter/daily/proscribed based on which god they pick.
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Feb 2, 2017 15:41
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:Yes, and? That is only a problem if you assume that the existence of a final failstates separating those with basic system mastery with those that don't have it is very important. I don't, personally. Well, we can "Yes, and?" anything and everything in the game, and not get very far. But if, in fact, you do care so little about long-term strategic management, why are you talking about it?
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Feb 2, 2017 16:11
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:Because I care about the player experience that it engenders, but very little about the idea that the mechanic absolutely has to be mastered to complete the game. After all, role-playing games service many audiences, and the game already features a difficulty mode that exists specifically to make combat challenge trivial to the point that anyone can complete the game. Yes, and? The point of debate was "does Vancian casting imbue the game with long-term strategic management?", not - with respect - "will Fair Bear Maiden like this change?" My argument is that Vancian casting doesn't inherently create long-term strategic management, and cannot unless you drop the free-form exploration element of the game. I'm not sure what your point about Story Mode is - surely this is an argument in favour of system mastery, since inept players can always drop the difficulty? You will have to elaborate on this "player experience" and why it is irrevocably corrupted by the lack of per-rest mechanics.
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Feb 2, 2017 16:42
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I... don't remember ever arguing that Vancian casting added fundamental long-term resource management ultimately tied to a failstate or another form of punitive consequence for the player in case of a mess-up, though? I was simply arguing in favor of the status quo because I felt it produced good results. I admittedly don't have a large sample size, and I certainly haven't studied player behavior nearly as much as Rope Kid, but even when I observed other people play, you'd sooner see them drop the difficulty than actually go back to town to grab more camping supplies. This is what people in the thread were and still are discussing, though, and what I was saying when you replied to me. If you don't think it's important whether PoE2 has long-term strategic management and therefore we can keep the half-assed system from PoE1, then cool - but rope kid and I apparently disagree with you on that. quote:Ultimately the crux of my argument is that I found the first thought process more interesting to deal with, while being fully aware that, yes, I could ultimately blow all resources and go back to buy more camping supplies. Games are full of mechanics that exist simply to add texture or slightly nudge player behavior, and I suppose I generally tend to be pretty accepting of them. What you seem to be saying is that you enjoy the illusion of strategy that per-rest abilities present. This was never actually in the game, so you should be free to recreate it in PoE2 - nothing stopping you from bushido-ing it up on your own. The issue with difficulty is that the entire game is already low-stakes in order to accommodate per-rest casting. Players don't want to define the adventuring day, so the only other solution is to pare back on per-rest
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Feb 2, 2017 18:41
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Ladolcevita posted:Lets divide, for simplicity's sake, PoE1 players into 4 broad groups: lol at the idea that the grognards are over on RPG Codex
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Feb 2, 2017 21:01
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Vermain posted:Again: I'm not convinced that any mechanic where the encouragement to do well is "I don't want to have to sit through three loading screens" is a good mechanic to have in a video game. I'm not convinced Vancian casting is resource management at all!
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Feb 2, 2017 22:11
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oswald ownenstein posted:I have aloth running around with like 5/4/5/3 for his per rest spells I play on Hard/PotD with 2/2 campfire and I was never at any risk of ever running dry. As mentioned, resource management isn't resource management if the resources are infinite.
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Feb 2, 2017 22:36
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AfricanBootyShine posted:have you considered that you are better at video games than most people So the correct response is for these players to use the lower difficulty settings instead of laming the entire system. Avalerion posted:What was the point of endurance/health? Just so endurance could regen but after x encounters you'd be forced to rest anyway? I never did quite get what was so good about Endurance/Health.
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Feb 2, 2017 22:44
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oswald ownenstein posted:It's resource management if you can't stand going back to town all the time for new campfires Except, again, I did not need to go back to town to get new campfires, and I was not managing resources. Part of the issue with per-rest casting is that individual encounters have to be weakened or "dumbed down" so they can be defeated by parties with depleted resources.
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Feb 2, 2017 23:18
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doesn't sound very unconditional to me
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Feb 3, 2017 14:14
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Who even plays games? I simply imagine an array of variables to my liking, and lo! - enjoyment is had.
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Feb 4, 2017 14:52
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The other issue with per-rest is the distortive effect it has on encounter balance and design.
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Feb 4, 2017 15:08
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bongwizzard posted:I strongly disagree with this on a philosophical level, but you're probably right on a practical level as people really seem to want to be railroaded into a specific play-style. As a player I want maximum flexibility in play styles at all times. You're essentially asking for a toy/simulation instead of a game. A game (especially a game like PoE, with its rules and numbers and decision points and consequences) demands stricter boundaries on how it is played.
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Feb 4, 2017 16:16
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Level scaling is fine, but it's a crutch for larger problems with character levels in general.
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Feb 6, 2017 18:49
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bongwizzard posted:I would suggest that it's impossible to make a "good" story while leaving any room for player agency. I think a lot of the best book/film/play stories require the audience to exercise a little agency.
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Feb 7, 2017 18:59
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It would be a mistake to read games as necessarily one single narrative which must be just so.
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Feb 7, 2017 19:07
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