Rack
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Posts posted by Rack
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If people just want to cast spells all the time without having to rest, they would either:
a) Have to weaken spells. I would hate this as I want spells/wizards to be powerful.
b) Have to make spellcasting time much higher. The more powerful the spell, the longer it would take to cast. I would actually like this and wonder if that could be modded in.
A) Yea, if you are a high level wizard and your spells are too weak, it will feel broken.
B) Wizards casting time is already long, adding more and most of the fights will already be over by the time you cast your first spell.
There is still no valid arguments against including an option to turn off resting limitations. It is a singleplayer game, it changes nothing for other people who still want to use the current system.
That's fine, but in the same vein it should be in a menu that has options for Monks using their abilities without needing wounds, and Chanters be able to use their invocations with no restrictions. As it happens you're in luck and this is somewhat accessible from the console.
As far as the mechanic goes the idea was a strong one but as long as people are getting round this by backtracking and resting constantly it's just not working. I'm never a fan of soft restrictions like this anyway because people will frequently use the path of least resistance, even if it isn't good for them.
If that's you though then the best solution is probably to force yourself to abide by the limits as designed. Don't rest until your characters are all out of resources AND are low on health. If that's still not getting through with the supplied resources then try turning the difficulty down. If you think it's boring for a character not to be using all his resources every fight remember he's just 1 character out of 6. Control them as a group and consider when it's best to use which characters resources.
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Pauses in the voiced conversation would drive me up the wall. Since my reading speed is well above average I'd end up reading half the dialogue, then it would randomly start speaking throwing me out. Then I'd start over, get halfway again before it randomly started speaking again and I'd lose the thread again.
It works for subtitles because I can just glance down for 1/10 of a second to read the line then resume watching, but a weird half-measure there would be a real problem.
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@Hatred I think that's kind of unavoidable in a game with lots of side content and no level scaling. If the side content doesn't give any tangible rewards it becomes just tedious, and if it does, you're overleveled for the critical path content.
I believe Josh originally wanted to lightly level-scale the later critical path content à la BG2, but that went down like a lead balloon so he didn't. So here we are, completionists break the game.
Ugh, he really should have had courage in his convictions there. Since Oblivion level scaling has become a dirty word. No-one understands it, they don't get it's been used to great effect in loads of games, but they vehemently oppose it because it was used badly that one time.
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Given that there appears to be never a disadvantage to having both sneaking and scouting activated, beyond slower move speed which is rarely relevant in game terms, it seems to make sense to have both scouting and sneaking as always-on abilities. I never see any reason not to have the mode on, and if you were to split the modes I would never see any reason to not have both modes on.
I'm disinclined to advocate for splitting the modes because I don't believe that would affect the core problem: that both modes should always be on.
This man has it. As it goes the pros and cons go like this.
Pros.
Can get closer to enemies without being seen,
Don't run the danger of running into traps.
Spot hidden objects.
Cons
None/looks a bit silly
That's not a decision. In the IE games it was worse because the con was "is boring"
Ultimately I don't mind overly, as flaws go it's pretty minor. I don't think there really is an interesting decision to be made here, unless harsh time limits are applied being absolutely meticulous is really the only option, no matter how you try and balance it. You need something in that con column.
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Wow, this is speedy for GoG. Now I can start a real game of PoE.
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I went with GoG, but the downside of no patches is pretty severe.
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Given how big that first patch was, how soon it arrived and how broken the game was (if they had done any testing at all, or even idly booted it up they'd know about the bugs with saving and equipping items) my theory is the release game was an early development build from a few months back that they put out, hoping that this patch we just had would be day 1. It being an early build it had reference to alpha assets which were removed in what was intended as a release candidate.
I dont think it was so bugged, bugs saving games in the same place you get a companion, randon bugs where files are damaged that usually start happening when you already have 30 hours in the game ... thats not something you can test in the beta. sometimes happens, the same way that sometimes games stop working when you have 200 saved games. thats not easy to test before release.
The game was not bugged at all, there was nothing that made you lose your file or that made you unable to finish the game (even that damage files bug could be solved by yourself in less than 30 seconds if you google how to solve it)
I'd argue a bug that makes it impossible to not finish the game is at least as bad as one that makes it impossible to finish the game. But the point is that both of these bugs should be blatantly obvious to anyone even reasonably familiar with the game's systems within the first hour of testing. As soon as you equip your second item or reach the first town you WILL encounter these.
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I really do not see the point of resting, it just breaks up the flow and forces you to run all the way back to an inn to restock on comping supplies and take a nap.
Oh, there isn't a line. But if you're wasting 5 minutes running back to town frequently and you're getting bored by it, it's probably the game's way of saying, "you're resting too much".
But you're not resting "too much", as the game lets you rest THAT much. The fact of the matter is the game mechanics allow you to rest after every single fight if you so choose. The game does not offer any plot or mechanic based penalty for doing this, and instead simply makes it inconvenient for the player, not THE PARTY, which is how it should be instead. Walking back to town is no different whatsoever from having one big ol' loading screen instead. Oh, except that the loading screen prompts you to click an area transition icon a few times, such depth and strategy, wow.
The only way in which this system can be said to add challenge to the game is in making weak enemy groups relatively tougher because you don't always have all your abilities ready for them, but this illusion of challenge goes right out the window as soon as said group becomes too tough for your group to handle, because when that happens you can simply run back to the inn and wipe the floor with them again. As I said before, what do you think people will do with this system when they're presented with a REAL challenge, such as trial of iron? We all know the answer; They will rest spam, because that's a perfectly legitimate way to play the game, as made possible by game mechanics, and they will get really friggin bored of the runs back to the inn.
I only hope Obsidian has the courage to break away from this nonsense when they make a sequel, which will have less obligation to follow the IE games' mechanics so strictly if it's not another kickstarter project promising such adherence.
Really this is two points.
1) In principle is limiting resources over more than a single fight a good idea.
For me the answer is "maybe". My favourite combat systems all revolve around insular encounters, but these are games with very limited encounters. If you're going down the Baldurs Gate route you need a lot of combat, and it's easier for filler combats to have meaning if the results of those combat matter. Even with no planning throwing a few enemies your way is an interesting problem because you need to work out how to get past it with the fewest resources. Having every encounter hand-crafted to be interesting is probably too big an ask so this is the best way.
2) Is the current camping system a good one and should it be changed for any sequels.
I think this is where we can hope for an improvement. Going back to rest should cost an in game resource, otherwise you end up in an awkward situation. Maybe on normal or hard the system is fit for purpose, if you spend your resources wisely you won't NEED to go back and will just hold one camping supply back for the final fight. But on Ironman Path of Torment people are going to be inevitably led into spamming rests.
A fixed system for a future game would rationalise classes powers across the difficulties and limit rests by ingame resources rather than player ones. But I don't think it's inherently a bad idea.
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The "adventures where you choose a path" segments were great, I really loved them. The variable speeds is also a wonderful convenience feature. I'd normally use haste scrolls for this purpose but this is much better.
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Given how big that first patch was, how soon it arrived and how broken the game was (if they had done any testing at all, or even idly booted it up they'd know about the bugs with saving and equipping items) my theory is the release game was an early development build from a few months back that they put out, hoping that this patch we just had would be day 1. It being an early build it had reference to alpha assets which were removed in what was intended as a release candidate.
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I'm not sure I get the camping system, seems like something that is a nice idea in principal but falls down in practice. It's been well noted that supplies are limited by player patience which is clunky at best.
Secondly it's really weird that resting supplies are limited by difficulty. I get that it's a lever you can pull to make battles harder, but the balancing of wizards is going to be all over the place. Are they balanced for hard and twice as powerful as they should be in normal, or balanced for normal and hopelessly underpowered in hard?
Or is the combat system only intended to be a fluff option anyway?
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But the games still largely functioned for most people. If a bug will break a huge part of the game for nearly every player that's different to a few abilities not working as intended.
The real joke is on the folks crying about bugs - because most of the games this game was based on still have bugs - either in the form of things which were stated as x in the manual, but work totally differently, or were simple oversights lol.
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Complaints about bugs show a severe lack of perspective on the issue if you ask me. First of all, CRPGs are notoriously buggy on release and have been forever because they are very complex and complexity leads to more variables that can go wrong. And second of all Obsidian made an incredible game on a shoestring budget, and xpecting that incredible game to also be bug-free on release is just absurd. They did not have the resources to do that. Period. So please try to be a bit more understanding and be happy that they are patching it just a little over a week after release.
Again, there's a difference between "bug-free" and "no crippling bugs linked to simply using absolutely core functions".
If saving and equipping don't work the game isn't fit for release. Period. Why was this version even made available?
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I usually try to avoid making gripe posts, but my level of frustration and irritation with PoE is growing at such a rate that I kind of just have to let it out this time.
Despite being highly interested in a spiritual successor to the IE games of my halcyon youth, I didn't back the Kickstarter for PoE because I wasn't interested in playing a WIP/beta game. Instead, I bought the game a couple days after its official launch, but nevertheless, it feels like I'm playing a late beta version.
When literally not a single day can go by without me reading about or encountering a new major bug, I think it's fair to say that the game has launched in an unacceptable state. Disappearing passive bonuses from double-clicking to equip armor, endlessly stacking attributes from loading a saved game, disappearing focus regeneration from equipping an item designed specifically for the only class in the game which uses focus...
These are not bizarre, obscure bugs which only a small portion of the player base is likely to encounter, these are things which virtually every player is likely to encounter in the normal course of completing the game.
I'm still enjoying much of what PoE has to offer, but you can rest assured that I won't be making the mistake of paying full price for an Obsidian-developed game any time in the near future.
sounds like every other game that has come out in recent memory. not sure why you are singleling this game out? however unlike something like Assassins Creed Unity this game was delayed numerous times and actively beta tested for many months. Like all massive RPG the sheer scale and complexity means that not everythign can be caught in beta. So yes on some level one would always expect for the first few weeks a large scale testing of a launched game to be the first port of call.
Seriously I can not think of a single RPG that launched without issues and I mean in 20 years worth.
You choose to buy a computer game on launch week, trouble is always expected. Even some of the greatest games launched broken. What happens next is whats important.
There are plenty of edge cases in the fix list that fit under "games are buggy, especially at launch" category. You don't expect perfection and it's a straw man argument to say that's what's going on here. But this isn't a normal level of unfinished. You can't get through this game without bugs unless you.
A) Never save your game.
B) Never equip an item.
If you can find ANY players who didn't fall foul of either of these two I'd be shocked. When people are talking about being bug free it can only be because they just aren't paying any attention. People are clearly being blinded by nostalgia here. It's been decades since the last game of this ilk but a broken game is a broken game. South Park had an acceptable level of bugs at launch. New Vegas was bad but better than this. KotoR 2 was about on par. Obsidian have lost their shield of "publishers are to blame for the bugs" They clearly just don't give a damn.
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Is the mega dungeon really going to be over a third of the game? Where's that coming from? When the Mega Dungeon was announced as 15 levels I'd assume each of those levels would be many times smaller than a city area and the whole thing would be less content than one of the big cities. If it really is that big then for gods sake tone it down, what were they even thinking? If after 2 hours I'm still on the first level of a 15 level dungeon then the dungeon is effectively smaller because I'm going to give up that much faster.
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I like it, simple, clean and effective. If you can resist the temptation to add a million clauses, additional abilities and flat counters it will be a great mechanic. The examples you gave give me hope though, sounds like they all have good counter-play built in.
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Fingers crossed, It's just running a few simple numbers so it could be wildly inaccurate. If they've done more of the larger mods first and have already been running into the problems that show up late in a project it could be here much much sooner than that.
I don't exactly have any inside info beyond having programmed a few entirely separate projects myself and am familiar with how they tend to balloon at the end.
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Well I totted up how far along the progress reports said they were in the project, compared them to how far there is to go, made an estimation based on when they started and factored in the usual delays that come at the end of a project.
The date I came up with was err... June 2007. This is just a guess mind but I'd suggest anyone itching to play it again should be able to do so without worrying about the restoration being done while they are playing.
Hard mode is too easy, easy mode too hard
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I think the difficulties with hard being too easy are partly due to xp issues, but not so easily addressable. Without level scaling you can decrease the xp available but that will only cause issues elsewhere. Level scaling would fix it but I don't know how easy that is at this juncture.