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bongwizzard posted:But see that’s a personal failure on your part, so rather than change the game to make it simplified, maybe just work on your own hangups? As mentioned, the main issues are: a) designers have to balance around wildly-variable party strength, since the range of wizard power varies so greatly between "fully loaded" and "running on empty", which pushes designers towards boring trash mobs; b) players are incredibly allergic to the balancing factors of vancian casting, like time limits and restricted travel, which compromises the fundamental mathematics of this 'strategy' mechanic. Both vancian casting and consumable items are in a lot of ways inexorably tied to the conception of D&D as an open-world dungeon-crawling disposable murderhobo simulator, rather than the more modern carefully-crafted narratives with delineated sidequest/exploration content and resilient supporting cast. For various reasons traditionalists can't or won't make distinctions between the two, or allow the two to exist separately.
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May 7, 2018 14:08
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ProfessorCirno posted:In all honesty it is disappointing that non-casters have few to no dialogue options compared to the caster classes. Fighter has a whopping zero outside of Blackjacks who get one. Yes, but Fighters can have dialogue options all day
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May 10, 2018 10:41
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:despair over a lack of gods or a general need for stability sounds pretty existential to me
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May 16, 2018 12:01
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corn in the bible posted:If you want solid tactical combat from a rtwp dnd style rpg you're looking in the wrong place. It has literally never happened, and never will. Someone should probably let Obsidian know then.
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May 16, 2018 14:35
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I can't believe Dungeons & Dragons is thematically and mechanically incoherent.
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May 21, 2018 17:08
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bongwizzard posted:Im becoming pretty firmly convinced that “story rich “and “interesting/challenging gameplay” are incompatible at the current price point people are willing to spend on a video game. It's not really to do with that at all. The specific example you mention (multiclassing) isn't for "story rich" players, but rather is a mechanical/gameplay feature catering to people who liked D&D (especially 3rd ed.) and who like theorycrafting character builds. Their interest in narrative is actually pretty much irrelevant to their interest in charops/tabletop RPG in-group signalling. I think there are solutions to problems with balance and unfun or degenerate gameplay, but developers also have to juggle the desires and red lines of RPG players - and these tend to be arbitrary and irrational at best (like, for example, dismissing fantasy turn-based systems out of hand). It's not a question of developer budgeting. Freaking Crumbum posted:one thing i'd like to see in a future PoE sequel would be "on miss" effects. by that i mean, it really feels bad when you power up to use a cool ability and get this: I'm pretty sure early drafts of PoE flirted with not having Misses at all, until the audience complained that it was too much like D&D 4th ed.
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May 23, 2018 00:30
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Khizan posted:I feel like a big part of the problem with RPGs in general and games like PoE in particular is that their fanbase has a huge split in it. On one side you have people who want grueling difficult combat encounters and who just speed through the story. On the other side you have people who don't care about the combat at all and who only care about the story and character interactions. Trying to please both factions usually ends up squarely in the middle with neither side as happy as they'd like. I don't think that is necessarily the big split (or even the only split) in the fanbase. RPG players have a lot of sacred cows and at least one person will flip out over what might be relatively minor changes, e.g. changing the party limit from 6 to 5. There are players who will disavow swathes of games because you can't create your own character, or there is/isn't an open world, or there's not enough choice & consequence, or not enough items etc. Appealing to multiple segments of the audience isn't completely impossible, but as mentioned there are a lot of sacred cows and players can rule out solutions arbitrarily - I think a lot of resistance towards level-scaling from some players comes from the tone-deaf implementation in Oblivion, which has stuck in the mind as especially awful and colours the entire mechanic. Similarly, for your specific example, I think Obsidian's done a great job with intelligent difficulty/gameplay options to let their game suit both hardcore tactical players and less strategically-minded players... but it seems like the foundations for solid combat aren't quite there, possibly because of features like multiclassing creating massive variability in player power? If so, it might be better to dump it as a mechanic... but a lot of players would object.
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May 23, 2018 10:48
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Avalerion posted:The main contributor to (lack) of difficulty and challenge in balancing is still having levels more than anything - just look at divinity os2 for a fully turnbased rpg that still suffers from this. Ah yes, my old enemy: vertical advancement
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May 23, 2018 11:08
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Ahaha, oh god. Uncap the level scaling rope kid!!
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May 23, 2018 11:30
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I think the issue is that level scaling in D&D is based around a specific experience of fighting goblins at Level 1, fighting ogres at Level 5, fighting vampires at Level 10... and your DM just doesn't let you (seriously) fight level-inappropriate monsters or go to level-inappropriate dungeons. You never have to work out the maths for Level 20 xaurips because a Level 20 xaurip is called a "glabrezu" or a "adamantine golem"; at level 20, you don't go to Xaurip Island for an adventure, you exclusively go to demonic hellgates or dragon lairs. This is at odds with PoE's preferred style of non-linear sidequest locations and sustained focus on fantasy geopolitics - at Level 20, it is entirely plausible and intentional that you might run across Xaurip Island, or have an endgame quest where the antagonists are kith soldiers for Rauatai or the VTC. You can't have the same fiction that all your endgame enemies "just happen" to be "naturally" 20 levels higher than your earlygame enemies because they're mostly the same enemies. My preference... well, my preference would be to get rid of levelling giving bigger numbers if they only exist to balance other bigger numbers, but aside from that: my preference would be to reflect xaurip weakness in their stats rather than level, and allow those stats to level-scale appropriately for players with level-scaling on. A Level 20 xaurip should have proportionately the same stats as a Level 4 xaurip - xaurip frailty, then, should be reflected in the relative difference between xaurip stats and player stats, not in xaurips being Level 4 and always being Level 4, to the point they become completely useless as an encounter. However I'm still waiting for the balance/dispositions patch so maybe I've got this all wrong. rope kid posted:Honestly, the upcoming patch will be the first real and sober attempt at power balancing. During my playthroughs (and going through Backer Beta feedback) I saw a lot of eye-watering builds and content that didn't vary much on Veteran and PotD. thank you  kid
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May 23, 2018 17:06
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The best kind of healing is the kind where you stop the enemy doing damage in the first place, and the best kind of stopping the enemy from doing damage in the first place is the kind where they can't do damage because they're loving dead.
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May 24, 2018 23:05
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SirSamVimes posted:It's not that your actions are wrong, it's that they are inconsistent with the position you are trying to argue. If you didn't do any of the required stuff then it appears that you do not believe some knowledge should remain forgotten and in that case why are you even trying to argue the point in the first place? It becomes frustrating because it's somewhat arbitrary which actions are referenced and the game then allows no nuance in those references - there's a big difference between moving on from past events with appropriate perspective and, say, orchestrating a massive conspiracy to cover up your empire's continuing hegemony over all reality.
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Jun 1, 2018 09:55
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i'm being hyperbolic, but ropekid has been very clear on multiple occasions that he believes single player games should be re-balanced (for a variety of reasons). i fundamentally disagree with him, but it's his game so that's how it's going to be. i feel like there is a middle ground between "don't change anything ever" and "re-balance all single player content based on <data>" which is why i opined for the patches to get split up and give players the option which elements they want to include in their game. the dev notes could include "HEY DUMMIES WE'RE BALANCING THE GAME BASED ON THE EXPECTATION THAT YOU'RE DOWNLOADING BOTH OF THE PATCHES AND IF YOU DON'T THEN ANY gently caress UPS ARE ON YOU" so people are warned, but i'd personally rather have the option. Just play on Story Mode dog
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Jun 8, 2018 00:19
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pmchem posted:The elephant in the room is the anti-POE2 campaign by absolutely unhinged rpgcodex users with a political agenda. I think that affected initial reception, and you can still see a huge amount of passive aggressiveness in /r/projecteternity comments and other dumb poo poo like an obsolete "bugs megathread" still being pinned after multiple large patches. It's a typical segment of your fanbase actively working to undermine the game, because the internet is a toxic and stupid place. This seems unnecessarily hysterical.
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Jul 7, 2018 19:25
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RPGCodex is full of horrible alt-right types and should by all rights gently caress off forever, but a) I don't think we need to ascribe even a significant minority of negative reviews to a Codexian whisper campaign considering all audiences are generally fickle and lazy, and b) there's a whole host of other potential reasons that PoE2 might not sell well - and if we're honest, some of those are self-inflicted.
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Jul 7, 2018 20:11
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Count Uvula posted:The combat is focused a lot more on clear cause and effect is the only real way I can think of I don't think this should be underestimated.
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Jul 8, 2018 00:26
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Ignoring the parts of the ending decided on Tuchanka and Rannoch, the ME3 ending options are determined by warscore (made up of multiplayer score, sidequests and minor import variables) and, if warscore is low, the Collector Base choice made at the end of ME2. The obvious mistake Bioware made here is that the kind of person who actually completes a game (and posts about it on the internet) is also going to be the kind of person who does multiplayer, completes all sidequests and imports saves, i.e. has maximum warscore. Same problem as ME2's suicide mission, really - you can have really complex and intricate systems working away under the surface, but if you don't plan properly everyone's going to end up with the same result anyway. e: goddamnit
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Jul 25, 2018 17:10
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loving this page right now
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Jul 26, 2018 11:15
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Avalerion posted:I think it also confirms that Woedica was never actually in charge, being deposed it just her fake back story. So what was Thaos trying to do in PoE1?
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Aug 15, 2018 12:31
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Avalerion posted:Just as he said, only he’s setting up a new order instead of restoring the old. Like when the watcher can choose to empower Berath at the end of poe2. But Thaos' motive is that the gods hosed up the intended order by deposing Woedica, so he's trying to return the pantheon back to how he originally designed it. He's bugfixing.
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Aug 15, 2018 13:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:This goes back to what I feel was one of the core themes in Pillars 1 - that the real problem with animancy is that it's proving that your "soul" isn't important or unique at all, and the entire concept of the divine power of souls is bullshit, because your soul in the end is more akin to an organ then to anything spiritual. People are freaking out over animancy for the same reasons they freaked out over science in the equivalent era of earth - in part because it's largely proving that "life" is random bullshit, and none of this is divinely inspiring. Scientists on Earth were low key hiring people to dig up corpses so they could dissect them and realize "we're all just ridiculous piles of meat and water!" Animancy is doing the same - it's showing that your soul is in fact so unimportant that when you die, it's going to be mushed into a terrifying metaphysical soul slurry and then partitioned out into new bodies as if you never existed. Unfortunately I think this only highlights a flaw in the setting - namely that if magic is just another brick in the positivist wall, then what's the point of having a fantasy world?
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Aug 15, 2018 22:15
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RTWP probably isn't the actual problem with PoE's mechanics. RTS games manage quite well without even a pause, but they also don't have all the same legacy features PoE does (e.g. the player's pieces might have 0-3 active abilities or powers, rather than dozens). FTL is also a cool RTWP game.
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Aug 16, 2018 09:47
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Avalerion posted:Dunno about calling it legacy features. In bg you’d prebuff before the fight, send most of your guys towards the enemy and only need to micro the wizards, in poe even the fighter needs to cast stuff. Fair, but there's something to be said for the solution to fighter/wizard imbalance being making fighters into mini-wizards rather than wizards into mini-fighters.
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Aug 16, 2018 10:32
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Tyranny did not have good combat, but the contradiction I'm drawing here is between the desire to have RTWP just like the good old days, versus the desire to greeble mechanics - to have more powers, more feats, more resources, more stats, unique to their class or sub-class or loadout. Hence why most games that are real-time both limit the number of verbs on-screen and rely more on common, mutual verbs for most gameplay, i.e. in an RTS only a handful of caster units might have more than one active ability, and most of the gameplay will involve using the same actions (attack, move, guard) across different kinds of unit.Hieronymous Alloy posted:Once you get your scripts written, especially if you're using the "More AI conditionals" mod, the game basically plays itself -- all you have to control is positioning. It's a different kind of front-loading the fight prep but after you've set it up you're golden. Overall Deadfire probably has less net micro than any other tactical-map RPG I can remember playing. I'm not certain "automate the game" is a good solution to "RTWP with a dozen powers per character is fussy and exhausting" though.
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Aug 16, 2018 19:05
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there are too many classes and they exist primarily to soothe anxious nerds
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Aug 21, 2018 00:07
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Rascyc posted:Hm really? Most of them are fun though. I have to imagine the ones I don't find fun, that someone else out there probably does. There's some very unique builds on the main forum. Sure, but for better or worse "fun" is the lowest of bars and isn't really relevant to these other design issues. Monopoly can be "fun" but that doesn't stop it from also being tedious, rigid and unfair (as it was deliberately designed to be!). I think if you want classes to feel distinct - and from that, meaningful and powerful - then they need a unique or at least specific relationship to the core gameplay. Part of the reason Priest and Cipher feel less satisfying to play than in PoE1 is because part of their class mechanic got designed away from them: they no longer have near-exclusivity on statuses, health/endurance is gone, every caster is a per-encounter caster now. Part of the reason Ranger has always felt less satisfying as a class is because their core class mechanic isn't and wasn't ever particularly specific - they get a perma-summon and are good with ranged weapons? Monk and Rogue have largely the same role but feel better to play, because those classes have a stronger conceptual relationship to how combat happens and what the player can do in combat with those classes. Subjunctive posted:Given just that you can’t respec between classes and items are tied to them, I agree that it would be better to have fewer classes each with more internal complexity. I think it would be harder to balance, though, and that’s already an area that has presented a challenge. I dunno, I think it'd be the opposite - with fewer classes individual builds would have fewer, stronger, more predictable baselines.
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Aug 21, 2018 11:17
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Ginette Reno posted:Ranger's role in poe1 was massive single target damage. Apart from a Spirit Shifted Druid no class - not even the Rogue - could match the combined dps output of a pet/Ranger on one target. They paid for that though by not having much utility outside of damage. In Poe2 the pet is so nerfed though that I'm not sure they even still fill their original role. Other classes can match the damage but also far exceed their utility. Oh sure, the size of the numbers a class can bring to bear matters too. But I think access to meaningfully distinct features or combat functions is important and can buffer a class when their numbers are nerfed. If I remember right, Rogues were pretty popular in PoE1 despite being one of the weaker classes - and I think part of that is because even though they didn't have the raw power of a (1.0) Wizard or Cipher, their Sneak Attacks gave them access to a unique role of combat flanker in a way that other classes couldn't fully replicate. I don't think Rangers have that 'hook', which is why the rebalance for Deadfire hit them hard.
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Aug 21, 2018 21:42
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mary had a little clam posted:I thought the sidekicks were fine as is. They are a step above Create-a-Party characters because they feel like they come from the world of the game instead of randomly falling out of an innkeeper. In fairness optional features can still have a knock-on effect on other parts of the game. A stronghold may be optional but the effect it has on the game economy isn't, and in that case there isn't much a designer can do to balance around that. It's not really the case with sidekicks but I also don't think you're going to find many people who were actively happy with sidekicks, rather than just "fine" or whatever. It's hard to get enthusiastic about what is inherently a compromise.
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Aug 24, 2018 14:40
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I don't think White March did itself any favours being split into two either.
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Oct 8, 2018 14:08
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DoctorTristan posted:IIRC his original scripts for GM and Durance also deviated from the writers' spec pretty significantly (far too long, required an additional 'mind dungeon' map be made for GM, plus a few other things prohibited by the brief). After he refused to change them Sawyer and Fenstermaker went in and made some pretty substantial cuts, which seems to have been one of the things that pushed Avellone over the edge. Yeah, this is made up whole cloth. It is important to be accurate.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:34
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The weird stuff about Avellone refusing to change anything and being overruled sending him over the edge. It goes alongside the strange fanfic about how Obsidian/Avellone are totally going to get mega-sued for embezzlement/libel or whatever.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:21
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ilitarist posted:In Pillars of Eternity 1 POTD I let Bog Dragons go because I wasn't sure I could take them on; this is an example of storytelling interacting with mechanics. That's a great story.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:06
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Both Witcher 3 and Pillars have poor gameplay, largely for the same reasons (adherence to genre) and largely expressed in the same ways (tedious fixation on numbers without due thought to the wider system).
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Oct 12, 2018 15:54
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Ginette Reno posted:What games have you played that have good gameplay then? Because while I agree that Witcher 3/Pillars have their flaws, they're about as good as RPGs get, and the gameplay is pretty fun in both. I don't think thinking of Witcher 3 and Pillars as RPGs is useful to understanding gameplay. 'Roleplaying' doesn't describe the actual nuts-and-bolts play involved, but is a higher-level grab bag of features that (as just noted) range from "dialogue and quests" to "making narrative choices" to "character customisation and optimisation". The actual gameplay thing-that-we-play always falls into another category - the thing about nerds dismissing Witcher 3 as a mere 'action game' is that it's true; the problem is that Pillars must also be dismissed as a mere 'strategy game', because that is true also. In that vein XCOM2 is a good strategy game that is very comparable to Pillars, both in terms of how they work as well as the larger cultural baggage. E.g. in XCOM2, the combat area is littered with important features: cover, walls, hills and troughs, explosive objects, all of which have a mechanical impact. In Pillars, combat arenas are large open spaces with potentially a chokepoint nearby. XCOM2 creates a whole series of gameplay considerations with randomised tile pieces (flanking, LoS, height advantage, specific abilities and equipment). The considerations generated by Pillars are minimal and repetitive ("lure them to a doorway"), placing even more emphasis on the raw stats of spells and characters. Where XCOM2 generates gameplay, Pillars reduces. Obviously you can also compare to the IE games - not that they still hold up entirely today, but I do appreciate how often hosts of numbers in Baldur's Gate were actually a cover for discrete qualitative effects: Paralyse, Silence, Breach, True Seeing. Conversely I think Pillars tends to work in reverse, with effects translating to stat bonuses/maluses in an endless back-and-forth of numerical attrition.
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Oct 13, 2018 01:12
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ilitarist posted:replace Witcher 3 combat with strategy and you'll have... Pillars of Eternity, possibly.
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Oct 13, 2018 12:11
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don't have vertical advancement
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Oct 15, 2018 01:34
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personally I'd be way of describing the Huana as "socialist", and for that matter of describing myself in any form as "libertarian". however I can see a sorta legit argument from an anarchist perspective
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Oct 16, 2018 09:18
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User posted:Capitalism doesn't create inequality 
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Oct 17, 2018 19:48
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a sustained lmao that obsidian patched out their final boss
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Oct 18, 2018 10:16
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2house2fly posted:You may know already, but they had actually planned to make (at least some) consumables per rest, but made the mistake of not going through with it. specifically, because they thought grognards would freak over the change to tradition. you get the game you ask for.
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Oct 24, 2018 12:48
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