Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2: Capt. Asshole Island

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Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Khizan posted:

Would definitely improve the early game experience imo.

You could always fill party gaps at the inn if you're having trouble.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 00:44

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:06

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

hangedman1984 posted:

So back when the PoE card game was coming out there was also a lot of chatter about a tabletop RPG. Has there been any more talk about that does anyone know?

I don't think it's being seriously pursued (could be wrong). PoE's system is heavily dependent on a computer crunching numbers in the background, so you'd have to rewrite everything to translate it to tabletop.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 01:45

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Furism posted:

Goon Fund Update

The fund is up to $381USD. While this is great, it's not enough to design an item, spell or even name a pet. If you can't justify putting up $500 for a Pledge, this is a good opportunity for you to spend less. You can back the game for say $200 and then add $50 to the fund. When we reach enough money for the pet naming tier, then you get a say. Almost like your own pledge! For half the money!

You can up my pledge by another $50. In exchange I demand an extra vote on our dumb pet/item.

And no one is speculating on the most important factoid from that stream: we'll be able to do something with all of our extra pets! Petting zoo? Pet combat arena? Eder opens a pet store? I'm pretty excited.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 08:37

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Rascyc posted:

Sure but they are not required.

The extent or what's needed is limited by the players knowledge of the difficulty setting. A lot of people don't touch scrolls and thus don't realize that fighters are hilariously the best debuff casters in the game or that paladins can sworn enemy a boss and land almost every debuff you can craft.

Ginette Reno posted:

I don't think a lot of people realize either that Eldritch Aim is one of the best spells a Wizard can cast and you really want to toss that on before throwing out your most lethal status effects.

I'm doing a playthrough on hard right now and while I'm not a complete scrub this is the sort of stuff that just never occurs to me. Seems like you don't need to do any of this unless you're doing a PotD run, so, what, 95% of players will never need to bother with any of it?

I'm glad Obsidian is so willing to scrap systems if they aren't working. I'd hate for them to latch on to something like per-rest abilities because that's how they did it in the first game. And getting back to the Health/Stamina system it is stupid and unintuitive so I am not sad to see it going.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 17:46

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

X_Toad posted:

Having all spells be per-encounter with a per-rest resource meant to empower them also means that we will have to memorize twice the number of spells. If there are about the same number of spells in PoE2 as there were in PoE, this will be a cause for a massive headache when using casters. Not to mention, of course, the inevitable clutter of the UI to present the effects of both Empowered and Regular spells. The whole thing sounds ill thought-out!

I believe they're pruning the spell lists to remove redundant and less useful spells, and the system as proposed suggests that you'll never have access to more than three or four spells per spell-level.

As for UI clutter, they could just keep the empower effects hidden until you turn on your empower, at which point the tooltips show the empowered effect instead.

Rascyc posted:

Think they fixed that eventually

I really wouldn't worry about it. Just like people don't use priests some people will never touch a single consumable and they will still be fine.

You can make the game much easier in dozens of different ways. Shadowflame from wizards is probably my #1 that spell is stupidly good and versatile. It's so good that I remember some people in the old thread said they would never cast it cause it was so busted.

When my friends have problems and I don't want to spend the time figuring it out I just tell them to use all those dumb summoning items that they never used. That usually does the trick for them.

I currently use shadowflame and slicken to trivialize most "difficult" fights. It's amazing how powerful those effects are. And I will never stop summoning those stupid beetles.

Edit: And in other news, with 22 days to go funding for the game is approaching $2 million, with almost 18,000 backers pledging $1.03 million. Assuming they get the full Fig funds of $2 mil (and why wouldn't they) the funding for this is almost guaranteed to break $3.5 million. That's on top of whatever Obsidian has invested on its end.

Wicked Them Beats fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Feb 2, 2017

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 18:08

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Captain Concept posted:

Any chance that Wizards can cast from their hands? (No wand)

Actually... I just saw this in another tab. Is that a Wizard at the bottom? (~~I don't see no wand or grimoire~~ it's in his/her left hand isn't it...)

If a wizard doesn't have a grimoire equipped they just pull out a generic grimoire for the casting animation.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 19:13

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Captain Concept posted:

Errr... of course, I mean, when equipped with grimoire, you'd get unarmed magic if no wand is equipped (Ranged damage). Or some sort of weapon equipment, say, a "Ring", that functions the same way as a wand (weapon slot, ranged magic damage etc.)

I think the last thing the game needs is more weapon types.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 19:26

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Chalk me up as another person who thinks Obsidian can do no wrong and is excited for any changes they want to make to the systems. Pillars 1 is already a massive improvement over the garbage gameplay of the original IE games (come at me nerds) and I'm excited to see what they put together for Pillars 2 based on the lessons learned.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 19:39

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Chairchucker posted:

I'm somewhat curious as to what the in-universe justification for how spells get into a grimoire in the first place is, given they now can't be changed in game.

A wizard did it.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 20:58

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Chairchucker posted:

I feel like someone here said they hoped for something like this (from the latest update)

"As an added bonus, we wanted to announce a new add-on for all of our campaign backers: the Pillars of Eternity hardcover guidebook, Volume II."

I'm definitely grabbing that. I have the first guidebook and I think it's lovely.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 21:06

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Rookersh posted:

If I'm halfway through a dungeon and start running out of spells, suddenly I need to make a choice. Do I start using lower tier spells/get more stingy with my spelluse, or do I decide to run back out and get more supplies.

If you're halfway through any dungeon in PoE and are running out of supplies you need to get better at the game, scrub.

Seriously they rain those things down on you. I've actually forced myself to rest sometimes just because I found too many camp supplies and felt it would be suboptimal to not utilize them.

quote:

I don't want to stop doing the fun thing of exploring/clearing, so I'll usually just get more strict with spelluse. If it gets particularly bad I might start using that horde of scrolls I've been building up.

It's a thing to consider, and a form of resource management. I feel Baldur's Gate did it better then PoE though, by offering unlimited rests, but a chance of being attacked. In earlier dungeons you didn't really care about getting attacked cause it'd maybe be a kobold or two. By the end though, resting could mean an encounter with multiple greater enemies and no spells, which made using resources intelligently more important.

I remember that! I would reload a save if it happened.

quote:

It's a question of what you are looking for. Vancian Casting is a game of resource management. Yeah your Wizard might be useless for some fights to conserve spells, but your -group- managed its resources well and beat the dungeon. Per Encounter casting is more a game of "I went Wizard and want to do poo poo every fight please.".

That isn't to say per encounter can't be tactical, but it needs to be done perfectly to even get close to Vancian. Tyranny is not a tactical game in regards to resource management. You just spam ults/best moves whenever they come up. Thats fine for Tyranny, but it was also very simplistic.

A per encounter system could work, but it'd need to be VERY tight. If I get 10 missiles, 10 sprays, 10 summons, and 10 meteors every encounter anyways, thats still very spammy. It's only if I potentially might run out midway through every combat, forcing me to think about every spell use does it stay tactical.

Per-encounter is not non-Vancian, strictly speaking. You aren't talking about Vancian magic, you're talking about a specific interpretation thereof as found in early IE games. Newsflash: early IE games are complete and utter garbage mechanics-wise. You remember them fondly because of the writing and adventure, not because you had three slots in the third level of your spellbook.

And you have a per-rest resource, still, which is a resource you'll need if you want your spells to pack the punch they did in Pillars 1.

I think these changes sound good and I'm willing to give the devs the benefit of the doubt. But lots of people are acting like the Obsidian devs are talking like this:

rope kid posted:

When you push a button, then something awesome happens!

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 22:19

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

oswald ownenstein posted:

I have aloth running around with like 5/4/5/3 for his per rest spells

Some fights I don't need to use them and just use the weak per encounter stuff

Some fights I want to use a slicken or a blind and maybe a fireball

I still have enough left to keep pushing forward until I get to what is a really hard fight and want to rest first

It's definitely resource management. Or you can play on easy and run around with 10 modded campfire or whatever it is you like to do. My concern is the new system will be dumbed down hard where you use a bunch of weak spells and then have a few empowers for a hard fight and then you have to rest anyway. It just ends up being the same thing with less complexity for no gain

I don't see how letting you use your spells in each fight dumbs it down. Is a cipher or a chanter a dumbed-down mage/priest? What does per-rest spell slots add that is of such intrinsic value over the proposed empowerment mechanic? You even admit it's functionally the same.

And remember that resting is never really difficult in PoE and they haven't said anything about reducing your ability to camp in the sequel.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 22:26

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Ginette Reno posted:

In fairness, Ciphers are limited by having to build focus, so their per encounter abilities are still allowed to be quite strong because they can't spam them as much.

A Wizard on a per encounter system doesn't have to build focus so you can't have their spells have the same strength as a Cipher or else they're overpowered. So I can definitely see the concern that people will have over that. But in theory empower will still allow you to achieve the same effect and you will be able to manage that in the same way via the resting system.

My contention is with the idea that it "dumbs down" mages. It does streamline their mechanics slightly, but as you say the empower mechanic retains the resource management element. It'll come down to how well Obsidian manages to balance things out.

Power Bottom posted:

I really loving hope they don't mess with how Endurance/Health works. I love that system - it's brilliant and simple.

It's actually kind of confusing since I can't think of any other game that does the same thing. I imagine lots of players didn't understand why their character's portrait was turning more and more gray between battles.

And I just now realized that this is the first time in their history that Obsidian gets to make a sequel to one of their games. They've come a long way from their almost-bankruptcy a few years back. :3:

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 22:39

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Avalerion posted:

Cheers, I get how it works, what I'm wondering is what was the... I guess, intended way to interact with it was. Like for me it was a case of "character runs out of health = go rest", same as "character runs out of spells = go rest". Was that the point, or was I supposed to be doing something differently in regards to health management?

No, that's it. It's supposed to be a limiter on the adventuring day, especially for parties that didn't depend on per-rest abilities.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 22:58

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Octo1 posted:

I'm kind of okay with spells being per-encounter I guess, but if empowerment works in a predetermined manner, then it seems really boring. I'd prefer it if there were multiple ways to empower abilities (+dmg, +aoe, +additional status effects, etc..) with the player choosing which one to use.

On the other hand, I really wouldn't want endurance/health to go away, simply because any rpg that doesn't force me to rest semi-regularly ends up making me feel that my character is less a person and more a perpetual quest-solving machine. It messes with MAH IMMERSION and thus it would mess with the role-playing experience, and that part is kind of important.

And no, injuries alone probably won't work. I went weeks in-game without rest in Tyranny, and it was really weird.

When the game tells you it will take three days, five hours to get somewhere do you envision your characters marching tirelessly the whole way? They camp off screen.

But clearing up injuries requires using up special gear or magic wizard powers or something else you can only buy at an inn for 50 pand.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 00:43

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

New interview with J. Sawyer is up: http://www.mmorpg.com/interviews/pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire-new-info-including-release-window-1000011527

Some new subclass reveals in there.

quote:

MMORPG: Sub-classes were recently unlocked as a stretch goal. Tell us a little about how that works. How different could two characters be?

Josh Sawyer: We're trying to cover a range of concepts and a range of differences. The fighter subclass Black Jacket focuses on adaptability and tactical optimization, gaining additional weapon proficiencies, reducing weapon switch time, and granting bonuses when they attack into an enemy's weakest armor type. The trade-off is worse general Accuracy and damage, meaning they really have to focus on using the right weapons for the circumstances. A subclass like the Assassin is even more of a "glass cannon" than the standard rogue (which will be more durable overall in Deadfire). Timing and positioning are critical for them because, while they can be incredibly deadly, they are quite fragile in a stand-up fight. A subclass like the ranger's Ghost Heart plays much differently than a standard ranger because their animal companion is actually a lost soul trapped in the Between, only summoned forth in combat as a spirit.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 01:01

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

They're just like the BG2 kits, so you can be a regular old druid or you can be a shapeshifter and turn into a werewolf with some other drawback to balance that out yes i know werewolf was bugged and it's the worst kit but turning into a wolfman is fun

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 01:30

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

oswald ownenstein posted:

That's what I thought too

Then I watched a video where someone clicked and dragged food - which by the way you can have multiple foods - to the paperdoll and watched in amazement as the inconvenience of putting food/beer into quickslots vanished with my mouth agape in wonder

Oh my god, this changes everything

Gonna eat all that food in my stash now

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 06:48

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Charles Get-Out posted:

Oh man, those backer story dudes are awful. Out of three I've clicked on I've gotten horrible lol random wizard fanfic, poorly written and boring ship captain anecdote, and cringe-worthy lesbian fantasy.

I feel bad for the Obsidian dude who had to spellcheck this poo poo and script these NPCs.

There's one named Hiro.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 08:03

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

tithin posted:

So when I hit an ability and hover the icon over an enemy, the % that pops up, is that my chance to hit, or their chance to resist?

e: which companions actually carry over? I've got a party with Pallegina, Eder, Aloth, Durance and Sagani - do these guys all carry over?

Chance to hit. And the little symbol next to the number represents the defense being attacked.

Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina are returning as companions. The others might make appearances but will not be recruitable.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 08:34

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Obsidian did level scaling in New Vegas and it worked great. Everything had a tight range of levels, none of the Oblivion nonsense where you would face off against level 50 goblins.

If you went to a raider cave two or three levels higher than the designer expected you to you still got a challenging fight; if you went fifteen levels later than expected you visited the fury of a god unto them, which is as it should be.

Edit: Cazadores and deathclaws were assholes at every level. Also as it should be.

Wicked Them Beats fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Feb 6, 2017

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 19:07

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

frajaq posted:

Still waiting for Portuguese localization

I was legit surprised to see Korean pop up before they finished with the major Romance languages. I didn't know these sorts of games had a significant Korean following.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 20:48

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

New update on Fig:

quote:

We've hit the next stretch goal! Thank you so much for your contributions to make NPC Portraits, UI Customization and Italian localization possible. We are now are planning to add portraits for every quest giving NPC in the game. This is going to add hundreds of unique watercolor portraits to enhance the experience when conversing with NPCs. In addition, we also will have a full suite of UI Customization features that will be added to the game. Lastly, now our Italian friends can enjoy Pillars of Eternity II in their native language.

We all love new concept art. We would like to share the artwork for a new monster in the game called the Engwithan Saint which you can find, and fight, in the desert dungeon featured in our screenshots and video.

Tomorrow we will have an update focused on lore with new information about the Deadfire, announce our next stretch goal at 2.6m, and introduce a new content feature that we are very excited about. Again, thank you so much from everyone on the team.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 22:22

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Dragonrah posted:

I've been obsessively checking the progress of funding, but haven't been reading anything as I'm still working my way through the first game. Have they elaborated at all on the 2.4 million V.O stretch goal? I'm curious as to if that goal is intended to bring the amount of voice overs up to the level of the first one or if they are planning on attempting even more.

I don't have a quote handy but I believe the intention was to have double the voicework of the first game.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 00:46

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Tony Montana posted:

No consoles! NO CONSOLES!

Remember Elder Scrolls! Remember how everyone still loves Morrowind! Remember the trash Oblivion and Skyrim became, mostly because they changed to address the console market!

Console fags have their final fantasy and Mario and whatever else stupid poo poo. RPGs are for PC gamers, just like RTS and true FPS are!

gently caress the revolution of dumb!

Tony Montana posted:

and it was poo poo.

No, it's nothing as complicated as you would like.

It's simple.

Console = dumb games. PC = not dumb games.

RTS. What is RTS? Its a cool rear end genre based in hardcore multi and strategy. It doesn't exist at all on consoles, because the large sweeping commands and selecting many units at once doesn't translate to a controller. I have the Xbox Elite controller, I bought it a few days ago. For playing GTA5 it's great, for playing the new Tomb raider it's great. They are both pretty dumb loving games, dumb as in you need to be constantly stoned or something otherwise it's loving boring.

I don't really care you and others might get all 'omg console wars! we've been over this already!'

No, we havent. Right here in this thread about Pillars.

Don't gently caress up Pillars by chasing that sweet console market share and give us hosed UIs and exclamation points over quest givers and all that other poo poo. Don't build combat mechanics around the layout of the xbox controller. I hope the developer understand their game wouldn't sell well to the console crowd anyway and almost their entire success is due to PC gamers that remember how RPGs used to be.

Source your quotes.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 05:42

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

I've only played Morrowind on an xbox

I didn't think it was very good

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 05:56

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It wasn't the UI that broke DA II: it was the encounter design. Specifically, the first game had a really tactical and complex encounter system that led to deep combat, whereas the second one decided that was all too complicated for console gamers and replaced it with encounters literally designed for button mashing.

In that case it wasn't so much "consoles" themselves as it was developer's preconcieved and erroneous notions of what the gaming and console-playing public wanted. DA 1 sold great, they should have stuck with what they had, but they hosed it up.

Don't forget EA pushing Bioware into a super short dev cycle. Gotta have a new entry in the series every other year no matter what!

So literally every cave has the same shape (without even the convenient "pre-fabricated module" excuse Mass Effect ran with) and none of your decisions in the first game carry forward if it interferes with Bioware's hastily cobbled together narrative.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 06:33

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Airfoil posted:

Source? I remember a collective "meh", but maybe they've said different recently.

Here's the only quote I can find, from 2014:

quote:

CEO Feargus Urquhart said the team "haven't even talked about console" and cast doubt on ports due to having to use a controller.

"I'll be honest, it's hard to look at Eternity and think console," he told Digital Spy at GDC 2014.

"I go all the way back to Black Isle and there was a developer who was working on a Baldur's Gate PS1 title. I was like, 'Erm, I just don't see it'."

Not exactly chomping at the bit to make this an Xbone exclusive.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 08:29

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

bongwizzard posted:

How was Skyrim worse then NV?

Terrible plot pacing, zero lack of reactivity in the story, meaningless faction choices, characters lacked any depth, lots of "but thou must!" in the quest writing (oh ok invincible vampire lady with an elder scroll, I suppose I'll take you to your castle after all, since you're invincible and someone's Mary Sue insert. Oh hey your dad wants to make me a badass vampire, but I say no enough times so he throws me out of his cool party. This is the worst D&D session damnit Brad I said I didn't want to be a vampire and now you're punishing me by making me go to random caves to fight bears

).

Essential-flagged NPCs are a personal pet peeve, as well. I remember that I had a Dark Brotherhood quest to kill a pirate captain. No biggie! I snuck onto her boat and killed her from behind while she sat at her desk. But EVERY time her whole boat would somehow get alerted and I was suddenly in a fight with six opponents, two of whom were flagged essential and would keep getting up and back into the fray. I finally realized I could avoid their interfering by walking onto the boat and speaking to the captain face to face so she could call me out as an assassin and have an honorable one-on-one duel with me while the rest of her crew did nothing. So not only did the flagged NPCs annoy the hell out of me, they forced me into a quest resolution that sucked all the fun out being an assassin. I hate Skyrim so much.

Oh and randomly generated quests are complete garbage.

It was really pretty, though?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 16:03

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Tyranny is ok, I enjoyed the world building and characters, but the story ends really abruptly and the gameplay gets repetitive. There's only a handful of enemy types and your skills are all on cooldown timers so you basically just cycle through the same skills over and over again in predictable patterns.

The combo attacks are really cool, though they could've used some triple techs to go with the dual techs.

Edit: And the opening campaign thing where you make a bunch of decisions to help set the world state is REALLY neat. It was fun getting to an area and everyone there already has an opinion, good or bad, of your character based on how you handled things in the initial invasion.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 18:03

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Iretep posted:

i realised a good story is very subjective when i met a person who said fallout 3s main story made him cry at how deep the story was.

Gotta have some serious father issues to have that response to Fallout 3.

Mass Effect 2 would probably drive him to suicide.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 18:50

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Targeted release date is March 2018, per this article: http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-2-features-a-new-world-revamped-combat-and-an-angry-god/

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 18:56

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

The Berath's Blessing stretch goal they just added is interesting:

quote:

Berath's Blessings is a new feature for Deadfire that gives players special bonuses when they start a new game, based on achievements that have been completed in previous gameplay. Berath plays a large role in the story of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire that we don't want to reveal quite yet, but she will aid you at the start of your adventure with her blessings. These can be used as a helping hand to defeat that next difficulty level, to provide additional challenges, and to increase the reward for chasing down and completing achievements. Each completed achievement gives the player points to spend on blessings when they start up a new game.

Players will be able to spend these points on a wide variety of unlocks. Some players may simply want a more powerful starting character - better starting gear or more attribute points. Other players may choose to more quickly advance through a part of the game that they don�t really want to repeat - bonus faction reputation, or starting the game with extra copper coins. Players will even have the option to start the game with some of their favorite things acquired during a previous journey � starting with a favorite companion or Soulbound weapon from an earlier playthrough. There will even be unlocks that make the game harder, boosting the challenge of the next campaign.

I was expecting a more traditional New Game +, but I'm intrigued by the idea of unlocking achievements adding new gameplay options. Reminds me of XCOM and how beating it on higher difficulties gives you new Second Wave options.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 19:13

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

marshmallow creep posted:

I forget what happened there. Someone wrote a story that basically went too far in some way and no one caught it when it went on a tombstone and it got edited (with consent and help from the original writer, I think?) after the game was released but people got upset that it got changed?

The original backer tombstone:

quote:

Here lies Fireborn, a hero in bed.

He once was alive, but now he�s dead.

The last woman he bedded, turned out a man.

And crying in shame, off a cliff he ran.

Some folks complained it was transmisogynistic, some other folks complained that if it got changed it would signal the end of freedom for all. "Won't anyone think of the straight white male for once??" they cried.

Obsidian sided on not offending people over four lines of text for no goddamn reason and contacted the backer about changing the text. Changed to:

quote:

Here lies Fireborn, a bard, a poet,

He was also a card, but most didn't know it,

A poem he wrote in jest was misread,

They asked for blood, so now he's just dead

And everyone reasonable shrugged and said "ok good enough" though you could probably find someone over at RPG codex who's still angry at Josh "SJW" Sawyer for hating fun or whatever

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 15:31

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Avalerion posted:

In character earnings like that are easilly dismissed anyway, of course a commoner eill tell you going to a monster infected place is dangerous but that's what adventurers do. This stuff needs to be spelled out explictly, kind of like the point of no return warns you in an actuall popup rather than having some fisherman tell you to be carefull or whatever.

What's funny is it still doesn't work. Sawyer talked about this in New Vegas: multiple NPCs, road signs, etc, all tell you that going north will get you killed. If you walk through Sloan a miner runs up and forces a conversation about the deathclaws over the ridge. If you go to Black Mountain a friendly mutant stops you and warns you about the crazed super mutants that will kill you dead if you keep that direction.

Apparently tons of players still go trooping on and get angry and frustrated when they can't win and quit playing. Bethesda has convinced a generation of gamers that if you walk the wrong way and hit a dragon when you're level 5 you'll still be able to win with a little tenacity.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 15:36

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Avalerion posted:

That's what I said, having characters, signs, scenery... does not work. Needs to be spelled out in the ui somewhere to be made explict, not in the game world. A popup, loading screen tip, something on the map maybe.

A sign saying danger, here be dragons is an invitation, not a deterent.

Obsidian did that with the New Vegas DLC, but those are points of no return. Putting the same warning on, say, each level of the Endless Paths seems like it would really damage the sense of adventure. "Careful if you jump down this hole" is thrilling/intriguing. "Don't jump down this hole unless you're at least level 8!" is stilted, mechanical, and removes part of the allure of venturing into the unknown.

Ravenfood posted:

The neat part is that you can skip those warning zones if you're approaching the areas in question from other high-threat zones or from strange angles, so the assumption is that if you're already there, you know what you're doing. But even in FNV, it took me awhile to trust that Obsidian had adequately supported that kind of off-roading and sequence breaking approach.

Yeah, there's two stealth boys in Goodsprings for a reason. If you want to skip all the tracking Benny nonsense and head straight to New Vegas there's a path there; you just have to find it.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 16:30

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Ginette Reno posted:

Using GM is still worth it though because Ciphers are so ridiculously strong. Though you could just always make your own as a hireling if you hate her enough.

I open most fights with amplified wave and then proceed to stomp over anything that isn't dead after the first volley. It's disgusting.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 18:18

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Samuel Clemens posted:

That's no mean feat considering you can't have enough Focus to cast Amplified Wave right at the start of a fight.

Ok, I open with one shot from Grieving Mother's arbalest, and then she has enough focus to use wave. End of the day I'm crushing everything vulnerable to being knocked prone within seconds of the battle starting :shrug:

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 01:16

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

And they just hit the 2.4 million stretch goal, so double the voiceover budget. Plenty of text for me to listen to and a bunch of other people to click through as quickly as possible.

Edit: FTL is an RPG now?

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 01:19

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:06

Wicked Them Beats: Apr 1, 2007; Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

They just said in the stream that they have plans for a tabletop Pillars of Eternity.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 01:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2: Capt. Asshole Island

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