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zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
PoE2 gonna be cool but got to put on my cynic hat and remind everyone not to preorder video games. Fig needs PoE2, not the other way around.

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zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Clanpot Shake posted:

What's with the Fig hate? Am I wrong in thinking it's just a Kickstarter clone?
Fig self admittedly curates professional pitches to attract accredited investor money which is maybe cool and good, but it has the Kickstarter layered on top. Kickstarting professional pitches that are attracting investor money means the big boy gloves can come out for criticism in which case it falls closer to the anti-consumer side of preordering. Its a race to the bottom of how early into a project a company can leverage your money.

Its a bit grayer when its with niche games even though they are professional and the kickstarters want to advocate with their wallet and maybe even want the developer to reap the benefits of the time value of their money and the market research they provide by voting with their wallet. But if you've ever seen the sausage getting made with contract purchasing term fights over payment schedules, its give an inch and take a mile so kickstarting starts looking on the slimier side.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Urthor posted:

FYI, assuming we're 24 plus months out for FIG, the investment return seems pretty shallow yeah.

With compound interest and the poor sales of Tyranny, breaking 1 million is a pretty big ask for any sort of return, esp if money is going to be 24-36 months from release date.

A regular investment account with 5% compound is going to return better than 1.13 over 3 years, unless this game turns out to be a supermassive hit and breaks 1.5 million copies you should be putting your savings into a regular savings account. Deadfire will probably sell about 800k full priced copies, in line with the first game.

ofc if you know you're not going to actually save the money or put it in an account because lazy n disorganised, better to shove it in FIG than spend it on a vacation or a nicer car. FIG's one of the easiest, poo poo simple ways of investing money, but you shouldn't invest in 99% of cases.
I think you still need to be accredited so the target audience for Fig shares isn't exactly people choosing between car or savings account. Its for rich mother fuckers who want a hobby hedge or a bullet point that says "technology" in their industries served.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
My gut is that less characters is worse because its less. But if I think really hard about every time I've played IWD or POE, there is always a 6th person who feels really vestigial and is there because I wanted to check some box I didn't actually need.

The only unarguable reason not to cut it down is because there will be no base formation that won't set off OCD.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
I had 3 tanks in what I count as a party of 5 back at release when I count the 6th as Durance in a vestigial buffing roll that could have been replaced with potions. The difference between a tank and a melee direct damage is swapping to the weapon set with extra engagement slots. I haven't messed much with POTD but all the theory crafting I've read focuses on making everybody have defenses of a tank because the whole situation is a lot more fluid with the sort of stat buffs and encounter enemy counts. POE's systems let hybrids shine and cutting back to 5 helps highlight that.

Harrow posted:

No, but I'd be really surprised if they let us start PoE2 with level 7 spells. It'd certainly be overwhelming for new players to have to pick that many levels' worth of spells and talents on character creation. Plus, I'd bet they're changing some of the underlying character-building and combat systems, so PoE1 levels probably won't translate easily to PoE2 anyway. It's not like Baldur's Gate, where the common backdrop of D&D rules meant that everything could definitely translate.

The whole "Eothas breaks out of the ground and leaves you nearly dead while sucking the souls out of people" beginning is a good justification for weakening the Watcher back down to a low level, if nothing else. Good justification for letting you change your Watcher's class, too--you're weakened and you have to learn how to fight again, so why not learn to do it in a different way?
Oh its not even confirmed yet? I thought people might have pegged it from a Fig question or something. Going to Deadfire is the perfect place for epic level inflation because it seems like the sort of place where a dragon isn't likely to be the apex predator.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
"A god did it" is the dumbest reason ever to start at level 1. I'd rather it just be unaddressed within story terms because level is already a dumb thing to bring into story anyway.

oswald ownenstein posted:

How hard is it to implement basic MP like what bg2/iwd had?

I have to imagine the usage rate of MP for those games was abysmally low, like 5% of all people who played the game, but if it's done like those games it could be a purely tech issue to work out and not need any gameplay/creative support.

I've played through BG2 with someone recently and we really enjoyed it - we're at the Balthazar fight in ToB.

fakeedit: more riddles please - easily one of the best parts about BG2 was the dungeons with all the riddles and dialogue puzzles (like the bells in the temple)
Probably something like doubling the programmer team. Its sort of a purely tech issue, but you need hooks everywhere inside the gameplay (like what if you lag out and walk somewhere there is a persistent AOE but you're lagging so your client doesn't know its a persistent aoe until it catches up?) so its not like it would be zero impact on the core programmers if there was an extra multiplayer programmer team. And also needing that extra multiplayer programmer team.

The Obsidian programming team is lean as gently caress for what they've crammed into these new games, but MP is an entirely different level and set of expertise.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Rymyrgands choice is the best. Quarantine is the only safe option. In retrospect the bleeding heart choices end exactly as well as one would hope in the endings but its totally irresponsible.

Harrow posted:

Really, almost every game mechanic in PoE is justified by soul stuff. Your level is basically how strong your soul is--most classes, even the ones who don't cast spells, use their souls to fuel their more superhuman feats. So when a god sucks out your soul, resetting your level to 1 is a reasonable mechanical consequence of that.
I don't know, everything fluffwise says getting your soul sucked out by a god would make you into a non sentient vessel. Its kind of like how you can't reboot level by saying you got hit in the head because any hit hard enough to do that is going to leave you permanently disabled, not reset to amateur.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

oswald ownenstein posted:

Could just do crowdfunding for expansions too with a smaller goal


My gut is thar WM didn't sell well - despite the content itself being fantastic.
The achievement snooping doesn't paint a pretty picture. They aren't perfect demographic cheevos and cheevo snooping only means so much, but The Heir of Caed Nua, the new stronghold quest (was that even White March locked?) is sitting at 7.5%, soul binding a weapon is at 6.4% and Maneha and the Zahua/Devil cheevo is sitting at 4.0 and 3.9%.

Just under half of owners made it past Caed Nua for reference. So if you figure a generous only half the people stuck with WM to the point of getting through those opening overtures, the expansion attachment is like 15% of total sales at best.

Sucks because WM outclasses the rest of the game so hard but I guess the half full side is it must have been great practice for making POE2.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Samuel Clemens posted:

I agree, melee Wizards should become even more overpowered. :getin:
Melee wizards are underpowered in the most important way, their weapon itemization is replaced by summoned weapons.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
It just struck me how weird it is to have $5 coupons for a crowdfunding campaign when their competitor tries to prevent self funding as an ethical conflict of interest. It matters less when the Fig is just a preorder ask but it also sort of pegs the whole crowd funding part as a marketing circus.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Fair Bear Maiden posted:

Fig's basically taking a hit with those discounts and giving the money to the devs anyway, based on what I understand. It's a calculated risk to encourage people to back more and more often. Don't ask me about the eocnomics of it, though.

oswald ownenstein posted:

Does it matter though?

If people need to think of themselves as the savior of a company to back a game, then that's their thing, but I'm just happy being able to throw in on a genre I love.

I'll never get why people give two shits about stuff like this ' oh it's a marketing circus' - so what?

If you have some extra cash, pitch in and get some backer rewards, otherwise sit back and wait for release

edit: the reality is gaming - especially games like this - have the most ridiculously huge entertainment : money ratio you can find, so I'd pay $100 for a game like this easy - in fact it's weird that game prices have been so slow to rise when the costs of producing have skyrocketed. It's probably consumer sensitivity to price - but it's also a big reason why we have stuff like day 1 DLC, and why lots of niche games aren't being made outside of kickstarter
It gets murky for a couple of reasons. Kickstarter campaigns are usually vilified if there is a whiff of buying out their own campaign to ensure it gets funded. POE2 doesn't really have that risk so it just exposes it as the preorder scheme that it is. Preorders tend toward anti-customer but the POE crowdfunding has been fairly considerate on that front and you usually get a 30% premium for your time value of the money you put down compared to release pricing. So far just a prerogative for Feargus Urquhart being on the leadership team of the crowd funding platform which you can take or leave on the whiter or blacker side of gray.

The slightly scummier part is its displaying preorder numbers loud and clear for market analysis of anybody wanting to invest in the Fig shares. I can look now and see 6500 preorders at $30 and 4000 at $45 and try to vet that against the security brief that's forecasting for a $50 release and $20 net after Steam/GOG costs and sales tails. Except now there's this unannounced marketing campaign set up by Obsidian and Fig offering $5 credits toward crowdfunding. This inflates the proudly displayed pledged money figure with money that Fig or Obsidian already has and could devalue the prospected net per unit estimates before its out of the gate. The nature of the marketing circus is serious business with securities on the line.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Harrow posted:

A cipher is pretty different from a Watcher, at least in the game's lore, though. It's the difference between seeing something and experiencing something. Ciphers can see souls and use their powers to interact with them in a fairly straightforward way, while Watchers are able to relive a soul's experiences, talk to past lives, awaken a dormant past life in someone's soul, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's more than just an issue of magnitude, it's a whole different angle, the difference between studying something and being something.

That said, cipher is also an awesome class that is a ton of fun to play, and they also get a lot of class-specific dialog, so it's a great choice for the main character's class regardless of whether it makes more sense with the character being a Watcher.

I actually kind of don't like the story of a cipher being the Watcher, because you sort of end up a little too tied to soul stuff. You're a cipher and you're a Watcher and you're Awakened. I mean, I did that anyway because cipher owns, but it almost feels a little too on-the-nose.
I got to the purposeful awakening part of WM after reading the thread consensus that purposeful awakening is a watcher power and that seems completely off base. The actual sequence is you use your watcher skills to read souls to find one with a dormant personality, and then awakening it the same way every other awakened soul gets awakened. That is by giving verbal and social ques that are traumatic or emotional that resonate with the dormant personality in their soul until it awakes. A cipher or an animancer could do something similar, although with all the extra effort their methods entail rather than being the natural empath a watcher is.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Per rest and per encounter is like chocolate and peanut butter, it makes it so much better I don't really care that some people are allergic to peanut butter and can't experience the chocolate.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
POE1 has a better button to awesome ratio than DA2 so they shouldn't even have to mention how every time you hit an ability in POE something awesome happens.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

If I play PoE 2 like I played DA2, I'll just stop once I get my boat, because gently caress it, I've got a boat, why am I still charging people who have swords?
Just confirmed we fight Eothas by the scale zooming way out until each of your party members is driving a boat. This is the real reason they had to drop the party to 5, 6 boats is just too much.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

CottonWolf posted:

They could easily write it so that it's a part you don't visit, so you they don't have to write full "I know about this place" and "I don't know about this place" dialogue.
They probably have an easy out with expository dialog. The civilized areas seem to be in political turmoil that is new since you would have emigrated, and the uncivilized areas aren't going to be well cataloged common knowledge.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

oswald ownenstein posted:

I actually never got the love for the encounter design in IWD

I found all of the dungeons chock full of tedious trash - specially the severed hand and fire temple one

It was a good game because of the atmosphere and Mr Jeremy Soule's breakout performance but all I remember- having played IWD EE recently - is an incredible amount of annoying trash that still hurts bad (archers) so you have to leave and rest constantly
IWD EE is unbalanced trash for starters. The BG2 engine and classes do no favors to it.

But compared to BG1 which was just sort of clumps of monotyped monsters or BG2 with monotyped monsters backed up by a mage, IWD encounters had a focus on varied monster role in dungeons with chokepoints disquised as things other than doors. It also wasn't afraid to have a little fun like the lich encounters and the penultimate boss being that rear end in a top hat merchant from the beginning with a pocket full of wands of lightning bolt. Its basically the heritage where TOB, IWD2, and eventually POE got their basic encounter philosophies from.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Ginette Reno posted:

I'm not sure what Bg2 you played but Bg2 has you fighting a wide variety of monsters and opponents, many of which have different resistances/immunities/abilities. Fighting a Beholder is much different from a Lich is much different from a Dragon.

e: I don't want to derail this with BG talk though so for content I can't wait to see what the prestige classes are. The Ranger one sounds badass.
I mean you never fight a beholder, lich, and dragon. You go to the beholder dungeon and the lich basement and the dragon encounter map (because he doesn't fit on normal maps). IWD encounters have compositions split much like a generic DnD party: tank, DPS, magic guys. And on a good day, a lot of the AI schemes even had some subtleties like target low HP or target specific classes.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Established publishers can get better cuts in contracts with Steam etc. but since Obsidian says they want to turn their expertise into publishing its probably do or die time to get their own contract rates with the various digital distributors.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

rope kid posted:

The easy way to think of it is that Power Source advances on scale: 0-2 = 0, 3-5 = 1, 6-8 = 2, etc. It's not a directly linear progression, but it is tuned to produce the outcomes that we want.

When you take your first level, you gain +3 points toward leveling up the associated source of the class you selected. You also gain +1 "virtual" points toward every other class' Power Source. They're virtual because you can't do anything with them unless you multi into one of those classes. When you multiclass, you switch that balance, gaining +3 in the new class, +1 in the old class. If you were to alternate back and forth between each class, you'd gain +4 points every 2 levels.

E.g.

code:
Char Level	Fig Level	Rog Level	Disc Pts	Guile Pts
1		1		--		3		"1"
2		2		--		6		"2"
3		3		--		9		"3"
4		--		1		10		6
5		4		--		13		7
6		--		2		14		10
7		--		3		15		13
A 7th level Fighter would have 21 points in Discipline and the corresponding Power Level (which I can't remember off the top of my head).
Are abilities' power source requirements and power source scaling equations available at a glance without digging through semi-obfuscated databases, ie within native UI?

e. V
Question still stands for scaling functions then, most of POE's scaling functions are just like SCALES BUT ITS A MYSTERY

zedprime fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 31, 2017

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Power Bottom posted:

So basically the same problem that Multiclass/Dual Class had in BGII. Got it.
2e multiclass and dual class were either overpowered or underpowered depending on what the setting felt about experience caps. Multiclasses were balanced with a similar philosophy as the 75% target of POE2 multiclasses, and it largely worked through the original high levels. Dual class was the definition of dipping and maybe wasn't on the same level as 2e multiclasses or 3e dipping but still.

Then epic levels started getting encouraged through splat books and spell casters got to become gods and everybody else incrementally ticked up stats that stopped mattering a long time before. Fighters got a 5% bonus to hit every level which is amazing at low levels but starts getting meh in the teens. Meanwhile mages get diddly squat in hit bonuses comparatively and their spells don't start coming online for a while. Multiclass the two together and you get your THAC0 at low levels and by the time THAC0 gets boring, you're an archmage.

I would crowd fund the hell out of an option to take multiclassing out of POE2 but it looks like a solution to their problem of a small story focused team of adventurers, and out of all options they look like they are trying to take the best out of the philosophies of 2e (75% rule, passive increases without active development) and 3e (buffet of skills available if you plan your route accordingly) so I have refrained from complaining at the internet.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Wizard and Priest feels are going to be down to encounter and spell design because guess what, POE1 has per rest casting and you functionally still cast the same spells every fight, whether its those same spells every fight or split somehow between multiple encounters. Losing per encounter low spell levels wasn't even a big deal because spell mastery did the same thing you'd be doing anyway.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Entropy238 posted:

I personally don't really get why people think cooldowns are satan. Is it just that they tend to be used in WoW/MMOs?
They have a tendency to turn into an algorithmic sorting system (if I do A 3sec B 4sec C 2sec back to beginning its the maximized way!) instead of an action and reaction dynamic.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Meet in the middle and instead of trying to proceduraly tweak existing spell animations, make confetti fire out of your crotch when casting an empowered version.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Entropy238 posted:

Hold on - now I'm confused. I thought that character level was a distinct concept from the power level in any given class. For example, a 17 Cipher 1 Monk has 17*3 + 1 (=51 Power Points = Power Level 9) in Cipher and 1*3 + 17 in Monk (=20 Power Points = Power Level 4). So you'd get 17 Cipher (P9)/1 Monk(P4).
This highlights the language quagmire power points, power levels, and character levels lead to. He's basically saying if you map power points back to character level, a 10/10 multiclass is mechanically like a level 13 and some class a and a 13 and some class b.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Naming isn't going to fix anything that blowing up levels won't. Just say gently caress it and give 4 power points per experience bar you can assign to the classes as you want. I haven't played with the algebra but there's probably more than a few combinations at level up where you want to take 2 in one class and 2 in the other for breakpoints and what's the point in restricting that in that case?

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

kikkelivelho posted:

yeah the proposed system allows for more nuanced builds like a fighter who has learned a few fast low level spells like Eldritch aim to augment his abilities or a front line wizard who has learned a few fighter abilities for self defense. With a more rigid system you'll always get a half mage half fighter which imo is a lot less interesting both from a RP and a gameplay perspective.
Given 4 hours with minmaxers any nuance is going to be sledge hammered away and there's going to be a dozen worthwhile multiclasses with explicit breakpoints based on power level.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

kikkelivelho posted:

That's always going to happen as long as the player has choices in how they spec their characters. I don't see how multiclassing changes that. I don't really see what the problem is as long as all the combinations are at least viable. I'd rather play with a party that's fun to me than a party that has been optimized by some number cruncher to be "optimal".
Its the one place there is a legitimate crisis of manhours that creates a dilemma where we could have 11 characters classes with interesting choices to make within those 11 buckets, instead of trying to make a way to cross those 11 classes into anything worth looking at while also trying not to compromise those interesting choices in the first 11 buckets while still making those buckets play nice with each other.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Zore posted:

I'm pretty sure it works like this? Character level is just an easy shorthand so you can compare characters relative power to each other easily and because people would flip their poo poo if it was removed.
That's the point, you can't compare the level of the individual class in a multiclass because it corresponds to a radically different amount of power points than a pure class of that level. The only thing that compares is the overall level which is obfuscated by being split into X of class A and Y of class B.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
That's going to have interesting implications considering how powerful incremental improvements to accuracy and deflection are.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

rope kid posted:

This is what we're doing. As a designer, I like to be able to give fanciful goofball stats to things like Smarty Man Boots, but this makes things easier for players.
Is everything going to come with some amount of attributes (or whatever reckons most powerful in design analyses and backer betas, but per, dex, and int lust is real in the crowd control meta) assigned to that slot or do you hope to try and lure players away from the safe choice? My experience in WoW and Diablo 3 is that restricting certain stats to a slot makes it non-negotiable for that slot to have some. Or are attribute enchantments going to be rare? Or all in one slot and you choose your favorite out of the six?

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

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.
Backer NPCs were wholly written by junior writers on the Obsidian team based on short prompts from the backer. There's a reason the collaborative stuff this time around is only the big ticket items.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Make a medieval RPG that is like Armored Core with armor and accessories instead of robot hands.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Different feather options that give different bonuses
I changed my mind on the most important focus for POE2 new/changed features, its this,

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Durance's dialogs imply the strength of a priest is self derived. And you can also see it as fomented by a priestly regimen and learning how to channel the power which is as much institutional and philosophical as it is god derived. A priest of whatever you may like post POE1 reveals isn't much different of a situation than Durance or a PC priest of Eothas in POE1. That is Durance's soul mutilation left him sort of out of sight of the god's processes and Eothas was outright missing from any portion of the pillars/wheel that priests normally interact with.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Bethesda games are the only ones that have made me feel like an archaeologist beside IWD. They all have good porno stories, good to get you in the mood and then you safely forget about it when you get into it.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think the most successful video game writing focuses on the ethics of agency: what it means to make choices, and what it means to not have real choices to make. That's why F:NV, the original Deus Ex, PS:T, and arguably even Bioshock succeed: they're about choice in a fundamental way.

Basically the nature of the genre lends itself to trolley problem themes.
There's merit to that but swallowing it 100% means books and film should focus on destiny.

Media has strengths and weaknesses and books and movies lend themselves well to observational intake and games make it easier to be experiential in nature. But you can stick a cinematic/novelistic standard like Heart of Darkness into a game and be really good like Spec Ops The Line and you can make an experiential movie or novel like Clue or S.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Basic Chunnel posted:

I'm all for batting around game story arguments so long as we shut out ludonarrativists from the thread. Somewhere Ian Bogost felt a twinge upon someone mentioning Spec Ops in conversation
The Line is really good in spite of all the nerd boners over fancy literary words.

e. If it makes you feel better I could go with a safer choice of Uncharted as an example of sticking a standard story into a video game and being good but its a more popcorn munching good.

2house2fly posted:

Lol, from the new update:
http://www.geographicsociety.org/islands-on-islands-on-islands/

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Under the vegetable posted:

It's a really conventional shooter that doesn't say anything that hasn't been covered more succinctly in a call of duty level.
I haven't played all the CODs. Could you direct me to the one that explores peacekeeping actions as neo-colonialism in an absurdist setting about going native?

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zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
ropekid has been dreaming of equipment mirrored across set slots for going on 15 years, glad to see him achieve his dreams finally.

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