Immortalis
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Posts posted by Immortalis
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Description:
If at anytime you break through the wall from the bathhouse into the tower, (I think this is the trigger) The entire mage tower will go hostile. Even if the quest to break into his vault is already completed. This completely breaks the future quest and prevents you from being able to hand in the quest or probably continue the DLC (when the third part is finally released)
Steps to Reproduce the Issue:
1) Complete the quest where you break into Arkemyr's Vault but don't use the Bath House entrance. (I used his robe as a disguise)
2) Get the summons from him and make sure he has spawned in his house and everything is chill, where he sends you to the Observatory.
3) Break that Bath House wall (I did it to go back to the vault as a shortcut so I could unlock a chest I missed)
4) This causes weird stuff to happen..
When you finish Bekarana's Folley and head back, everything is still hostile. The hostile imp in his office will tell you to head downstairs to the scrying pool.. but then just keeps attacking you. (The dialogue triggers normally but then he keeps attacking). The whole tower is hostile still and Arkyemyr is also hostile and just attacks you outright, with no way to finish the quest.
I assume I am also screwed now for the DLC and can't see how the quest ends - so I will probably have to start the game over.
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I hope this one doesn't suck.
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Not reading all this crap. Review was Awesome.
Fanboys gonna Fanoboy.
I hate to be this blunt, but...
That review is ****. It is. Obsidian's "worst game of all time"? Really???
There are plenty of problems with PoE. Plenty. I'm not denying that. But it is a very good game nonetheless. This isn't a review, it's a rant. It's rife with misunderstandings of basic game mechanics, which makes all his criticisms of the mechanics suspect at best.. and the fact that he couldn't think of a single thing to praise other than the aesthetics and the music is silly. This is a troll review at best. It's very clear that the reviewer went into it looking to take every single complaint he had about the game and magnify it to the point of ridiculousness.
Sorry, Sensuki... I've gotta disagree with you 100% here. This review is the Codex at its worst. And I say that not in a "the Codex is terrible" sense, but in a "this is the kind of thing that gives the Codex a bad name" sense.
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Hi! I'm a massive fan of Black Isle / Troika / Obsidian as well as a student majoring in Computer Science, a game hobbyist and an amateur game developer. (Disclaimer)
So, my question for today is a very profound one, and one that carries a lot of meaning to me, personally, and especially from a game developer studio perspective: What's wrong with Obsidian?
Everything starts with Black Isle and Fallout, which (if you're aware of the story around the production) was a general huge mother****ing mess. After Black Isle was shot down, the general messiness seemed to follow with Troika games, who made a couple of brilliant yet very flawed games. After that, the legacy, thanks to a few key individuals and their ideals, was transferred into what is today Obsidian.
Now, as a disclaimer, I have to say, I love everything created by these guys: Black Isle Studios, Troika and Obsidian. BI's slogan: "By gamers, for gamers" is still something I keep as an inspiration very close to my heart every single day (as an unknown amateur developer), and what they created is simply beautiful. However, everything created by this troupe and their derivatives has always been somehow fundamentally wrong: bugged as hell, imbalanced as foobar, illogical as hell.
My question is: WTF is wrong with Obsidian? Why can't they make solid products? I know there's a lot of tension between publisher - developer relations, that's always a handful and something for an entirely different discussion, but my presumption here today is that:
There is something wrong with the communication between the designers and the coders in Obsidian?
Because at many times it seems I'm playing a game with a beautifully designed world with lots of content and shreds of the designers souls visibly poured into every single detail, yet at other times I'm stumbling upon the very simplistic, childish even, mistakes that could be repaired with some simple programming with a little bit of forethought. Are you guys talking? Is there something between, even though this time (PoE) you were independently funded, and no publisher has a **** to say about yoru game? What's the problem?
Now, I'm not blaming anyone, I'm simply tryng to inquire some details about your methods into developing games, and whether there'd be something to improve. No doubt I'm going to get a generic response of "yes, we're constantly improving our methods and processes in all areas", but what I'm really interested in is the actual schizms between the programmers and the designers, since that's what I think is the main reason for this outcome.
Anyway, while any perspectives are welcome, obviously I'd rather take on some pov's from the crew.
You came to the wrong city.. This forum is 80% bleeding hearts that will defend almost every decision Obsidian makes. I think Obsidian is still one of the best companies in the industry right now for making games that aren't complete ****.. however I still fire up my old Black isle games and play them to death.. I couldn't even get past the prologue of Dungeon Seige 3.. it was horrible.
South Park was really well done.. but it's like 15 hours long.
Do we have any examples of large scale RPG developers that don't release buggy messes? Larian is probably the closest that comes to mind.
Blizzard.
Blizzard has a notorious amount of bugs in their flag ship product (WoW).. However I will mostly agree that they do pretty extensive testing of their products, however they have a massive following of dedicated fans that will play the same content for 6 months and continiously report bugs.
Obsidian has Sensuki..
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Learn C# and you will be ready to Mod this game.
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What patches? What are you talking about?And for people saying "but there are no problems like that in BG2 or IWD since they added massive XP to quests to work around the XP-kill problem"... exactly; they already used went in this direction. Having to add such patches, workarounds. Wouldn't it be better than having to patch up a broken system, being bugprone and being overall a stitched together whole to have a system dedicated from the start to allow this gameplay.
Every single IE game shipped, on day one, with quest XP and kill XP in equal measure. Never were the two concepts ever separated, or ignored, or added later, or overly weighted to one side or the other.
Stun nails it on the head.
I Re-iterate my point.. do most non-combat xp supporters even know or have even played IE games? If not, then PoE wasn't made for you. Thanks for your support to make PoE happen but this is an IE inspired game.
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I love Lephys, Caradin and Wanderon's logic.
They will Concede that, yes... maybe grinding didn't need to be done to complete/ experience IE games.. BUT YOU COULD GRIND IF YOU WANTED TO.. SO IT EXISTS AND RUINED THE GAMES.
I have never "Grinded" xp in any of my playthroughs of an IE game.. It's slow and repetitive and offered me nothing and I still reached max level just by fighting things I came up against..
This is like saying Spoons could be used as a weapon to kill someone so they are now deadly weapons that should be removed from society, even though spoons are never used as weapons except in the most extreme cases (Prison? I dunno).
It's not the developers job to police gamers so that we follow the way Josh thinks we should play a game. The developers job is to create an engaging and challenging game that we can make decisions in how we progress and win. If stealthing past enemies is what gets you off.. You probably shouldn't play an isometric game that focuses on combat..
BAWT IMMOTAL!! No Combat XP means we HAV Choice! Everything we do results in the same reward.. DAT CHOICE!
No Dumbasses, it means I am going to play the game in the most optimal way because now Stealthing past enemies has provided the best way to resolve encounters. I don't have to waste money or resources or take damage by stealthing past enemies or flexing my arms and scaring the bandits away.. So I am going to do that instead of taking my chances and using a risk / reward model of playing the game.
"Can I fight these guys? hmm I dunno but If I succeed I will grow in power.. is it worth it?" These type of scenarios are important.. If a group of bandits gives me nothing but some broken long swords and the guy stealthing saves time and hitpoints .. why the **** would I bother?
I wouldn't buy Call of Duty and start expunging my opinions about how gun play is degenerative and it should change it's focus to Real Time Strategy gameplay. Did any of you play any IE game and actually enjoy them or are you just around here to kiss up to OE Devs?
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Mmmm i remember in secret of mana grinding away to level up my fire spells and levels before the first main boss and basically every new area whenever i gain new caps on my abilities. Ff3 i remember grinding up my characters to learn new magic and become higher levels. Same with FF7. I remember grinding alot in dragon warrior games, basically spending a whole afternoon grinding slimes to get enough cash for all the gear the first town had and to be able to successfully survive wandering trying to find next town. I remember grinding in legends of lagoon because of just simply following the quest line strictly meant that u were under level and undergeared for the boss fights. I remember grinding in earthbound for new weapons and being able to survive because i felt i needed higher level spells and abilities to survive. In dragon age and mass effect, I remember going and finding every enemy so i could be at the topest level as i was doing the main quests. Ahhh i could go on and on about the many games ive played thru the years and will say ive known about grinding wayyyyy before wow even came out lmao. And i havent even touched isometric games yet until the past few years.
Again.. A Gross over exaggeration of those games.. "Grind XP" never entered peoples vocabulary until MMO's became popular. You never had to grind anything in any IE game unless you wanted to.. which IMO was stupid/pointless.First, could it just be that the people who didn't vote for it is tired of mindless grinding?
You never needed to do this to beat the games.. Chocobo Racing, Leveling Materia, Grinding to 99, fighting extra bosses, farming zone eaters, getting gogo or umaru..
None of those games required you to play the hidden content or grind levels. That was something you did for enjoyment. You can beat all those games at mid-level fairly easily, the hardest bosses weren't the last bosses but the optional bosses.
It wasn't called grinding.. it was called playing the game. Grinding is something you do repetitively because you have to. You can't fully experience WoW at level 35.. and if you hate leveling then the optimal way to level is GRINDING dungeons or GRINDING mobs. It's generally faster to grind something then do quests.
You had no choice in WoW. In those games you do. If you choose to grind creatures so you can reach the max level when you only needed to be level 50 - 60.. that's your own choice and your own fault if your not having fun.
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I'm telling you people, this forum would work so much better with beer on draught. We could have our own little beer summit. I mean, no one will get everything he wants, but we'll still all be happy anyway.
Like combat XP, I don't have the stamina to fight over lock and trap XP anymore. It's not like I don't play games with them and still enjoy them. I will continue to think that it's bad design, but once you start reiterating the same arguments two or three times, it's gotten to the point where you should stand down and let someone else take up the cause for a while. I do wish Grom would participate again, but that's mostly because I get a kick out of his posts.
I wouldn't get anything done.. So many fanboys that need a good ol verbal spanking and if you gave me a bunch of beer I would actually become their friends.. Eww gross.
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To start I voted;
Quests
Objectives
Exploration
Specific Combat Scenarios (which I would clump in objectives personally)
Bestiary unlock bonus (prefferably if more options than just combat are there to unlock it, like reading books about them.
Or really the proper answer;
Look at Vampire: Bloodlines and Deus Ex (the original)... they were really good in giving proper objective XP rewards.
Yawnnn.. Oh were you bringing up this old strawman again?
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LoL, you guys are so funny. Lock and trap xp was so minor and insignificant in all of the IE games that it isn't even worth mentioning. Like do you guys even remember how little xp was gained from it...
It's not so much that lock and trap xp is in the game.. The reason I am so dumb founded is that it's in the game and Combat XP isn't.
Trap / Lock xp is way more degenerative and abusable then combat xp.. at least with combat xp you are challenged in some way..
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Matt is too busy doing math to stoop to our lowly pleb level..
That was a bit uncalled for.. . I never implied anything of the sort. He asked why the poll said a thing. I answered his question by saying it said a thing because that's what people think. Then he responded to arguments and statements I never made and I responded by voicing my confusion about that. And now I'm voicing my confusion about your post. Math hasn't even been mentioned so I don't know where that's coming from. Have I said something else that offended you?
For what it's worth, I believed him to be joking/being silly. But maybe he wasn't. *shrug*
It totally was.. I think Matt is a little sensitive.. I won't poke him anymore.
Locks & Traps may be the least voted on but 81 out of 212 is not exactly an insignificant percentage of people in favor of it.
I have to agree.. I can't think of a more Degenerative Game mechanic then Lock / Trap Xp.. but somehow people want it? To iterate my original question.. What the **** happened..
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CaptainMace, the reason combat XP is so low and exploration XP is so high is that about 75% of voters think that exploration XP is justified while only 50% think that combat XP is justified. That's... pretty much it.
The people who want combat XP are pretty loud (not that that's a bad thing), but this poll (and the other two previous polls as well) reinforces the evidence that the community is pretty much evenly divided on combat XP. Half of us want it and half of us don't. Therefore, for either side to claim that their opinion represents what "true" fans of PoE want or some such is completely disingenuous. Just something to keep in mind.
Sure, but the problem with your arguments ...
I wasn't making any arguments about combat XP, just telling you how to interpret the poll lol. I'm pretty much done arguing about XP for the most part, which is why I didn't make any arguments. Not really sure what you were responding to there, but it wasn't what I wrote.
Matt is too busy doing math to stoop to our lowly pleb level..
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My point is that I can make a wildly subjective point about it. Yes, I liked the stories more than the combat. Yes, I did love PST, but I also loved the baldur's gate games for the same reason. The only reason I hated the combat in the IE games is because of the grind. It was always more beneficial to murder everything than not. So, no you are not no more of a true IE fan than I was. Those games had an engine built to compliment the stories being told.
There was no grinding in Baldurs Gate.. what game were you playing..
If you liked IE games minus the thing you spent 80% of the game doing and being rewarded for.. You aren't a true fan of IE.. Also hate to burst your bubble.. PoE won't change anything.. You still have **** tons of combat 80% of the time.. they just added a strong hold and took out the reward system.
Do you actually think your gonna be able to resolve most quests by talking your way out of it? Man common.. you been drinking too much fan boy koolaid.
Don't worry.. when the the koolaid buzz wears off maybe you will see the beetle forest and lion temple for what they are.. Fluff combat with no purpose. Assuming Obsidian doesn't continue "fixing" the game by removing all combat.. (They seriously nerfed the beetle encounter in response to people complaining the combat is boring)
Because Josh can't admit this design is retarded for a combat centric game.
Oh well.. at least I have wasteland 2..
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-modify difficulty of key story encounters based on party strength, up to a level that makes senseGreat.. now I need to make a new thread..
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CaptainMace, the reason combat XP is so low and exploration XP is so high is that about 75% of voters think that exploration XP is justified while only 50% think that combat XP is justified. That's... pretty much it.
The people who want combat XP are pretty loud (not that that's a bad thing), but this poll (and the other two previous polls as well) reinforces the evidence that the community is pretty much evenly divided on combat XP. Half of us want it and half of us don't. Therefore, for either side to claim that their opinion represents what "true" fans of PoE want or some such is completely disingenuous. Just something to keep in mind.
Combat Xper's aren't true fans of PoE.. they are true fans of IE.. The rest of your post is correct.
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Caladin... If his posts are serious then I question if he ever played a single IE game at all..
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First, could it just be that the people who didn't vote for it is tired of mindless grinding?
Again.. A Gross over exaggeration of those games.. "Grind XP" never entered peoples vocabulary until MMO's became popular. You never had to grind anything in any IE game unless you wanted to.. which IMO was stupid/pointless.
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I feel the IE style of xp reward with a few slight tweaks is very good for a combat centric game like PoE.
For a story driven game like Torment.. IE really fell short.. I love InXile's ideas for torment but that game is going to have a very different pacing then PoE..
So no.. I don't want that system for PoE.. I want it for Torment.
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Diablo has a way more simplistic combat system then PoE and that is a combat focused game.
Seems to me that you think that if a game has combat, that means it's a combat focused game. I don't think that how the majority of gamers categorize a "combat focused" game.
You are kidding, right? Diablo is a single char game. And each char has more active skills than any one char in POE.
I disagree.. sorry.. If PoE only allowed you to control one character then you may be on to something.
The fact that you control an entire party with different skills and attributes that bring different functionality to a fight and that most difficult encounters will require strategy and patience to win..
Diablo 1 / 2 / 3 are all about quantity over quality of enemies.. The amount of abilities do not make it more difficult to play or add more depth to it.
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It's still mind boggling to me, that in a combat centric game there is no kill xp.
Lots of people keep on saying it's a combat-centric game, that's not the impression I got from reading interviews with the devs (or the Kickstarter pitch).
Yea I thought that too.. Then the beta came out..
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And now for some idle speculation on the reason for those changes in voting patterns...
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theory 1: randomness
this explanation is boring, so lets ignore it
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theory 2: hard-core vs casual
maybe the kind of dedicated Obsidian forum members who check for new threads regularly and were thus more likely to vote mere minutes or hours after the poll was published, tend to have different opinions than more casual PoE fans who are more likely to only discover a new forum poll after a few days?
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theory 3: timezones
When the poll was published it was 18:17 in New York, 23:17 in London, and 09:17 in Sydney. So maybe the left parts of the histograms reflect the American, East Asian & Australian position on XP mechanics, and the middle parts the European, African & Middle Eastern position? Doesn't explain the significant changes in the right-most parts though...
Feel free to join me in this extremely meaningful and important
discussion!(yeah, I know, I should find something more productive to do to stop feeling bored...)
You forgot a quite obvious 4th theory: influence of poll so far
Knowing how your favorite option is doing can certainly manipulate your behaviour. It could convince you to vote at all, you could not vote for options you would have voted for if they weren't higher than your favorite option, and so on. My theory for Quest-Xp going down is actually that combat xp supporters stopped voting for that, just to change the balance further in it's favor.
Your theory is just a self fulfilling prophecy for your self. Don't drag the rest of us through the mud because of how you voted.
I can tell you right now that the most vocal Combat XP supporters all voted quest XP too.. (Some of them haven't voted yet.. I mean the ones who have already)
Where do you get your information about how I voted?
As a matter of fact: I didn't vote at all. Although I find (kind of) all xp sources justifiable, such a vote could be misunderstood as actually demanding all xp sources - which I don't. I would have picked the 'whatever Obsidian decides' option. Not because I think that would be best, but because it't their game and therefore their decision.
Nevertheless, I think no quest xp is not justifiable if there is lock pick xp. But the poll wasn't about dependencies.
I don't care how you voted.. I just don't want you spewing crap all over the thread. You just accused us of fudging numbers because we want Quest XP to lose against Combat XP.
Combat XPer's want both of them in the game.. Just like the IE games had.
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theory 1: randomness
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And now for some idle speculation on the reason for those changes in voting patterns...
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theory 1: randomness
this explanation is boring, so lets ignore it
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theory 2: hard-core vs casual
maybe the kind of dedicated Obsidian forum members who check for new threads regularly and were thus more likely to vote mere minutes or hours after the poll was published, tend to have different opinions than more casual PoE fans who are more likely to only discover a new forum poll after a few days?
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theory 3: timezones
When the poll was published it was 18:17 in New York, 23:17 in London, and 09:17 in Sydney. So maybe the left parts of the histograms reflect the American, East Asian & Australian position on XP mechanics, and the middle parts the European, African & Middle Eastern position? Doesn't explain the significant changes in the right-most parts though...
Feel free to join me in this extremely meaningful and important
discussion!(yeah, I know, I should find something more productive to do to stop feeling bored...)
You forgot a quite obvious 4th theory: influence of poll so far
Knowing how your favorite option is doing can certainly manipulate your behaviour. It could convince you to vote at all, you could not vote for options you would have voted for if they weren't higher than your favorite option, and so on. My theory for Quest-Xp going down is actually that combat xp supporters stopped voting for that, just to change the balance further in it's favor.
Your theory is just a self fulfilling prophecy for your self. Don't drag the rest of us through the mud because of how you voted.
I can tell you right now that the most vocal Combat XP supporters all voted quest XP too.. (Some of them haven't voted yet.. I mean the ones who have already)
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theory 1: randomness
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More fun with statistics! This time, four histograms showing how some of the voting patterns in this poll changed over time, based on the data from my previous three result charts:
And now for some idle speculation on the reason for those changes in voting patterns...
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theory 1: randomness
this explanation is boring, so lets ignore it
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theory 2: hard-core vs casual
maybe the kind of dedicated Obsidian forum members who check for new threads regularly and were thus more likely to vote mere minutes or hours after the poll was published, tend to have different opinions than more casual PoE fans who are more likely to only discover a new forum poll after a few days?
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theory 3: timezones
When the poll was published it was 18:17 in New York, 23:17 in London, and 09:17 in Sydney. So maybe the left parts of the histograms reflect the American, East Asian & Australian position on XP mechanics, and the middle parts the European, African & Middle Eastern position? Doesn't explain the significant changes in the right-most parts though...
Feel free to join me in this extremely meaningful and important
discussion!(yeah, I know, I should find something more productive to do to stop feeling bored...)
I appreciate your analysis.. but I do think it has a lot to do with 'randomness'.. I already have a general ~*~Feels~*~ for the people on this forum and can honestly say.. up to around 300 votes this poll won't really shock me in the results.
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theory 1: randomness
discussion!
Broken Quest Sequence - Bekarana's Folley
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Technical Support (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Bump (Didn't see it in patch notes)