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You can note at the top of the screen in screenshots that the date is given. 'Kyros Day' is the last day of any given month. Kyros' magic has sealed the valley, but the Edict itself hasn't actually been proclaimed yet.
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Sep 8, 2020 07:48
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Poil posted:Also D&D 5E (don't know 4E enough) does have tank mechanics, you just need to pick feats and class abilities for it. Punish enemies from attacking friendlies, preventing them from running past, giving disadvantage if they attack another target etc. Why no this is not obvious to everyone new to the game. DnD4e had the explicit concept of the 'Defender' role, whose major core classes were the Fighter and Paladin. The main ability of Defenders was that they were able to 'mark' enemies. If the marked didn't attack the marker, they usually had big penalties. Paladins got huge attack+damage bonuses against those they marked, while Fighters were able to off-turn hit those they marked to stop them moving past them to their allies. In DnD5e, this doesn't really exist - marking is an optional rule buried in the Dungeon Master's Guide rather than the Player's Handbook. The Sentinel feat gives you the ability to stop enemies moving past you, but you can only do it to one enemy per round (so if two enemies run past you, you can only ever stop one). The 'Tunnel Fighter' fighting style finally let fighty types hit more than one enemy off-turn, but is still optional material and never got 'officially' published. So in 5e, a fighter needs the Sentinel feat and the Tunnel Fighter style just to be as good as baseline 4e fighter with no special moves. The short version is that DnD4e put effort into making fighters as interesting, powerful and fun to play as spellcasters, and DnD5e did not. To bring this back to these video games: Pillars of Eternity introduced a statistic called 'Engagement' (since these games are time based but not strictly turn-based) to represent how many people you can hit off-turn. By default you only have an engagement of 1, but Fighters and similarly invested characters have higher Engagement meaning they're able to keep multiple people bunched up. Of course, no matter how high your engagement is, this doesn't stop enemies either teleporting past you, or taking the long way around to walk to the more fragile targets, so it's still not quite as powerful as Marking is.
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Sep 27, 2020 11:57
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Xerophyte posted:Same designer. I don't really think Rob Heinsoo needs to feel that much shame for ripping off himself. 13th Age is still pretty popular, which is good since it's the best d20 by a good margin. Well, that was the trick with DnD4e and today's modern games that take sufficient influence from it, like Lancer the mech combat game. If you build your encounters appropriately, then you can, as a GM, run your encounters like you're trying to kill the players, but still feel comfortable that the players will come out on top. I'm not sure how PoE and Tyranny prioritise their targets. But it's a little funny to me that absent tank threat mechanics (and it was a bigger deal prior to Stormblood's release), in FF14 doing big heals and regeneration would get the healer shooting to the top of the aggro table as they were recognised as the biggest threat.
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Sep 28, 2020 01:12
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It is pretty funny to me that of the party members who stand out most as "I am a big beefy melee person!" (Barik and someone else not seen) neither of them can actually wear any of the armor you find.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:04
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Whybird posted:This is getting into the old argument of whether a good GM should override the game's rules as written. My position has always been that the measure of a good GM is that they know when to ignore the rulebook in favour of the narrative -- but the measure of a good rulebook is that it minimises the amount of times the GM has to choose one or the other. There actually exist well-made RPGs where you can always follow the rules 100% of the time and the rules support the narrative. If your GM frequently needs to override the rules to provide the intended experience it probably means you're not using the right game system for the kind of game you want to play. EclecticTastes posted:Or, since tabletop RPGs are narrative experiences first and games second, the GM can just act according to the fiction, because the way the math balances out isn't remotely as important as making a good story, and a fight scene where the armored warrior valiantly holds off the oncoming attackers while the wizard prepares to blast their faces off with lightning (and other party members do their things, too) is more entertaining than one where anyone has to think about the term "aggro management" like it's a raid in an MMO*. But yeah, since Tyranny is a single player game with an unusual influence from (games mechanics spoilers, not an actual story spoiler)Chrono Trigger being a wizard with the most spells is generally more useful than any other kind of build, which is mostly fine other than making some characters less fun to use than others. It would be unfun to play Barik and only Barik while other players are the Fatebinder and Lantry, but since you're playing everyone at once it works out to just park Barik in the frontline while you play with the actually fun characters. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 11:40
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Also to help move away from TTRPG mini-slapfighting I would like to praise the player for making the conversations with party members more natural instead of doing what you can do as soon as you meet them which is exhaust their entire conversation tree and get, say, Verse to level 3 loyalty before you're moved three steps.
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Sep 30, 2020 12:45
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I'm outvoted clearly but I vote to support the Disfavored solely because I did Chorus in my first playthrough.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:13
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Companions have some absolutely great lines for why they're following you if asked by someone else if their Fear takes precedence over Loyalty in the conversation tree, I can say that. Since this stuff is independent, losing Loyalty is not the same as gaining Fear.
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Oct 10, 2020 08:22
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I'm voting for Stick with Ashe although since I've only played once I'm happy with either. More importantly, please kick. You know what I'm talking about.
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Oct 12, 2020 10:46
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:this is the path they kind of anticipate you will take on your first run. I did Chorus on my first run on the basis that at least they wanted to keep most civilians alive. I also figured Nerat would have some interesting grand master plan, because I figured that otherwise Ashe seemed too reasonable by comparison.
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Oct 13, 2020 10:26
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We haven't even gotten to the best parts of Lantry, and he's already demonstrated himself as the best party member. Great magician, extremely perceptive of what's going on around him, and also instantly willing to switch sides to whoever promises to keep him alive.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:26
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Deadmeat5150 posted:I never pay attention to critics, some actually thought this game was supposed to be a power fantasy? God the entire game is the Fatebinder stumbling from crisis to crisis like a drunk at a Christmas party and somehow managing to fail upwards. A lot of the initial marketing and banner ads were like that, suggesting you were sort of going to be like a Darth Vader to the Emperor; or at least the baddie equivalent of a Spectre from Mass Effect. Which, kind of, you are; but with the additional troubles of tyranny that you don't often get to see in the Star Wars movies.
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Oct 16, 2020 06:14
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Tunon's mask not having eyeholes is probably not a big deal except symbolically. Nerat is also a floating mask on top of glowy green energy. I assume stuff just kinda works. Graven Ashe is a 'young' Archon and his midsection is a big glowy blue orb, while Sirin looked pretty normal but is also like 15. We'll get to see Cairn's deal (maybe) considering he's 'dead' but in comparison to all the rest it's kind of interesting that Bleden Mark mostly still looks like a normal human.
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Oct 17, 2020 09:39
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One of the reasons I went with the Chorus in my first playthrough was because I was curious to see where they were headed. The Tiers are the last bit of the continent to have escaped being conquered, and the Fatebinder helped sort that out at the start of the game. The Disfavored are a small, elite force with a homeland. When the conquest is done, they have a home to go retire to. Appeasing them, from a ruler's perspective, is pretty easy. As a fighting force they're not interested in land of their own beyond what they have, just establishing themselves as useful to Kyros so that they don't lose any more of their culture than they already have (after all, they once had a different name). The Chorus straight up cannot exist outside of war. They're conscripts thrown into a meatgrinder with scattered elites supporting them. Like Nerat, they always need more. What do they do when there's no more room to grow?
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Oct 18, 2020 11:35
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The game will touch on it more, but yeah, "Barik is sealed in his armor" is a bit misleading. It's more accurate to say: A horrible magical storm that warped metal was cast as an Edict in a place where Barik happened to be. Most people were impaled by the various bits of metal flying around, if they were out in the open. The bits of swords and metal plates and whatever instead kind of accreted around Barik to the point where it acts as armor for him, and he can move around in it. Weird magical stuff happened. Even if someone else in that same Edict-Storm wasn't impaled, they should've been crushed by the metal slamming into them.
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Oct 20, 2020 13:01
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Lantry being a traumatised elderly man dependent on self-medicating to function doesn't not make him still cool, old, and a stoner. I enjoyed the reveal that Lantry is constantly tripping balls on my first playthrough. It also explains why he seemed so unconcerned even as he was in the process of being executed. He probably took a really heavy dose of his best.
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Oct 23, 2020 03:00
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Ditch the staff, that's what it's there for. Also you've got the wrong screenshot for Renata's missive.
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Oct 23, 2020 08:25
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I feel like Fatebinders don't challenge each other much unless one manages to piss off multiple of the others at once. Fatebinders speak with Tunon's voice, so not having the backing of other Fatebinders means that by accusing another Fatebinder of treason, you're suggesting that Tunon is also at fault.
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Nov 3, 2020 11:46
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I'm sure there's an obvious quote somewhere I'm missing but I genuinely think that Nerat's outburst in the command tent wasn't planned and that he really can't stop some of his absorbed voices, like Ashe's son, from bursting out sometimes. One of the people Nerat ate (and that presumably he makes use of regularly) is a pedo.
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Nov 5, 2020 09:50
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The reason I sided with the Chorus in my playthrough was that in theory they let anyone join, and might preserve more of the people than the Disfavored would. In practice... without too many spoilers, at a certain point the writing feels like it acknowledges that you might have stuck with the Chorus with the best of intentions but Nerat really is just that much of an rear end in a top hat.
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Nov 15, 2020 14:28
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As well as general mage supremacy in this game, an odd quirk that we can see now that we have all the party members is that of the characters clearly meant to be 'melee-focused' or 'tanky': Barik is stuck in his poo poo-rust and so he cannot wear any different armor. Kills-in-Shadow is a Beastwoman and so cannot wear armor. This means that you may end up with a bunch of heavy armor in your inventory and nobody to wear it... besides maybe yourself, but why? Another option is sticking Sirin in heavy armor. Because her song effects have no relation to any other cooldowns or recovery time, using her as an armored jukebox is viable.
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Nov 24, 2020 07:28
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Incidentally, if you're on the Scarlet Chorus path through the whole game I believe all this never happens. Lethian's Crossing is a town you pop into, recruit Sirin, claim the Spire nearby, and then leave. Nerat has no particular interest in the place.
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Nov 26, 2020 13:05
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Just noting that Edict pronounces are permanently marked and damaged by pronouncing Edicts. When you talk to Calio you mention that you smell brimstone, and Calio is constantly dusty and worries about crusting up when they sleep.
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Dec 19, 2020 07:43
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Most of the party are mages/archons already. Barik clearly has magical stuff going on with him (his armor grows back) and Verse does too, though less obviously; you can chalk up their preternatural magical talent to that. Kills-in-Shadow is the outlier, I don't remember if we're going to see anything that makes her markedly different beyond just her level of forward-thinking.
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Dec 23, 2020 12:21
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Interestingly I don't think we see an active downside of Nerat shoving knowledge into people's heads - like, they don't go crazy or anything. If Nerat can eat someone and then shove that knowledge into multiple people that's a pretty good deal. If Nerat wasn't nuts to the point that their plans-within-plans actively interfered and sabotaged themself then you could be a nice guy just by eating people who are going to die soon anyway and then spreading their knowledge. big think: Ashe immortalises his own legend but Nerat immortalises his own enemies?
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Jan 12, 2021 08:27
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Man, I'm glad I never bothered with the 'Tales of the Tiers' DLC (the one that's generating these on-map text encounters). It's the kind of thing that could've worked if it was in the game to begin with but added on after is just full of weird stuff. Pillars of Eternity 2 does a bunch of this stuff so much better; the only problem is needing to do PoE1 to get the full context.
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Jan 30, 2021 08:12
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I didn't check the credits but I feel reasonably sure this DLC wasn't written by the original game writers considering the overall weirdness of it. It's like the people involved had a setting bible but weren't given the overall 'reasoning' of it. The lack of 'kill anyone' in Tyranny is also pretty notable since it's something in both Fallout: New Vegas as well as Outer Worlds. Outer Worlds has many (many many many) flaws but at least it lets you shoot whoever you choose to. The lack of a 'force attack' command in Tyranny is very conspicuous since both PoE1 and 2 had one, and PoE2 even has specific NPCs that show up to cover for you killing certain NPCs you have no particular reason to. Please buy and play PoE2 since it examines colonialism the way this game examines authoritarianism except even better.
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Feb 14, 2021 13:00
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Veloxyll posted:Is the ending going to retroactiely ruin the game ala Mass Effect 3? No, but it's clearly put there to satisfy people who were annoyed it was missing because they didn't quite get certain themes of the game. That said, given that Tyranny is aimed at the RPG audience willing to read a lot of words, I will say that part of this was some of the marketing being misleading, as well as that certain points the game was making really need to be explicitly hammered in. I know you're meant to show, not tell, but sometimes people just need telling, especially in a game like this where you can't control pacing as well as not being able to control in which order the player visits certain areas or does quests. Note that if you look up the Steam page for the DLC it will tell you exactly what the ending is for, and it'll also spoil the resolution to one of the companion quests.
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Feb 18, 2021 12:34
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drat that was a big update. I could be wrong but I think spire-sigils are always symmetrical which helps in solving them? And yeah, as noted, Western music notation is not quite mathematically perfect. The Equal temperament scale of notes where each octave's notes are divided into equal steps won't always match the just intonation division of intervals.
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Feb 28, 2021 03:05
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sunken fleet posted:This is the eternal question in RPGs isn't it? JRPGs tend to manage it just fine. It's western RPGs that tend to keep falling into "fighter simple, mage complex" while JRPGs long ago learned "every character type should be interesting to play". This tends to be because western RPGs keep trying to re-implement DnD. They do tend to learn from it given successive instalments - for example, playing a Warrior in Dragon Age Inquisition is a lot more fun than playing one in Origins, relative to a Mage, because they made sure Warriors, Rogues and Mages all were given an array of interesting abilities. Unfortunately in the more conservative tabletop RPG circles, "every class should be complex and interesting" tends to be seen as "video gamey" instead of "a good game design idea in general, that video games managed to do first". Final Fantasy 7 Remake which is also, technically, a real-time-with-pause game managed to go all the way into making Aerith, the mage-iest of the characters, relatively dull to play, while Tifa, the punchiest, is the most engaging and entertaining with complex combos that are weaved for different purposes - for example, 'Starshower' does good aoe damage but also increases the damage of her next move, while 'Focused Strike' doubles as a brief evade. bewilderment fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 03:38
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The bit about the Chorus trying to preserve more civilians is why I went with them in my first run, but yeah, they tell you that a lot more than actually showing it in game.
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Mar 6, 2021 06:14
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Tiersmen being noted as 'fearing magic' is interesting and I don't think it's come up that much before. I suppose it makes sense, if all magic is derived from channeling the Archons, and almost all the Archons are under Kyros' control. It'd be seen as pretty risky! I don't think the Scarlet Chorus being barely functional is by accident, either by the game's writers or by Nerat and Kyros. They have the Scarlet Furies and Blood Chanters as their core, and they roll into an area, beat up the peasants and forcibly recruit them, growing larger until they finish with an area, at which point a bunch of them probably do immediately desert. They're very much obsessed with perpetual warfare, and the conquest of the Tiers is an existential threat for the Chorus as there will no longer be a recruiting pool for them to roll over. They're basically in decline as the game starts, with the bands of them around the Bastard City basically just being bandits and raiders to the local populace. Nerat is in charge of the Chorus, but he doesn't lead them in the same way that Ashe is (theoretically) leading the Disfavored. They're a tool for him, the laziest way for him to accomplish his mission and get what he wants.
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Mar 8, 2021 00:19
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:The next step is to go talk to our prisoner. I don't know if the flag for it is having a high Fear with Barik or just working with the Disfavored, but there's a neat line here you can get with the prisoner asking basically "Barik, what the hell, why are you still following the Fatebinder instead of Ashe". Barik's answer is along the lines of "The Fatebinder is the only one with the strength and cunning to bring order to this blasted land."
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Mar 10, 2021 12:39
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: Before you can answer, he blinks up at Barik, and the echo of a smile reaching[sic] his lips. I should have known that Barik of Battle's Rest couldn't stay out of Stalwart for long. Graven Ashe protects.
: Graven Ashe protects. Barik nods. You can trust the Fatebinder here, within reason. Are you well, countryman?
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Man, the 'no masters' path really just... doesn't give you a reason to do stuff other than 'Bleden Mark said an artifact was here', huh. The game lets you turn onto it basically any time you decide "gently caress it, I'm not completing this the Disfavored/Chorus way, my allegiance is ended" but doing it as early as the start of the game leaves things feeling a bit directionless.
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Mar 12, 2021 13:17
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sunken fleet posted:Does the game not comment on it all when you manage to secure all the spires? That seems kind of weird, aren't they supposed to be pretty central to whatever narrative we have going at this point? It's not really clear. When you're with a faction it makes sense that they're coming in as members of that faction (or conquered natives) but on the 'go it alone' path these people basically seem to just pop up because you made the spire go all flashy. You don't need to conquer every Spire to beat the game - in fact usually you only get around to 3-ish, with 4 happening either because you're on the no-masters path, or because the game lets you hop to Lethian's Crossing to pick up Sirin without your faction guiding you there, and so you're allowed to grab the Spire while you're at it. Usually (unless the mechanics have changed) you can't go to a place until your faction associate mentions it as a target.
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Mar 13, 2021 11:54
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This also makes two children Graven Ashe has lost to this war. Amelia doesn't seem particularly long-lived so it leads to curiosity about how many other kids he might have, and might even also have lost.
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Mar 14, 2021 01:50
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Mans posted:I followed the scarlet path and was entirely loyal to The Voices and the absolutely awful gut feeling you have everytime you visit the voices and the...interesting changes you see on the headquarters really make it a brutal playthrough. The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah the Chorus path is basically "oh boy I hope you didn't get too attached to any of these side characters you've met!" Yeah I loved some of the writing in it as well as the way you get to characterise yourself in it. I enjoyed how (act 2 Chorus path spoilers) when you convince the Stone Stalker tribe matriarch to go to Nerat to negotiate, having seen what's happened to prisoners you've sent to Nerat, you just... you hope maybe it'll be different this time, because she's not a prisoner. And you can send them off by saying "Hey... be careful. OK?" You warned them this time. Maybe it'll be different. It isn't different. Also makes the boss fight really meaningful.
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Mar 21, 2021 05:26
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Nerat and the Scarlet Chorus, portraying 'the Joker' and a bunch of chaotic rabble, actually act consistently and predictably as well as in a way that you can often trust what a given Chorus member is saying. Ashe and the Disfavored, portraying a 'disciplined' force, are always hypocritical and getting involved in different kinds of dumb poo poo.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:35
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Before this DLC, there was only one other way (that I'm aware of) to get Barik out of his armor. not really spoilers but just in case You can stick him in Nerat.
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Mar 31, 2021 13:53
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Malediction is my vote since we don't get to see it already in effect in the campaign.bob dobbs is dead posted:business side of obsidian was really great with poe, bringing the company back, basically, after big layoffs, then they hosed up tyranny and poe 2 and sold to microsoft. there could be worse fates PoE2 is actually extremely good though. Using Fig instead of Kickstarter was bad.
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Apr 1, 2021 09:34
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