why

A bit run down at the moment, but I plan on looking into this tomorrow.

I asked this question a while back. I want to be able to download and play, although I don't mind making regular purchases in order to get new decks. The way I see it, as a complete noob, is: 1. Paying for new decks is okay 2. Paying for expansions is okay 3. Subscriptions or weird access schemes will undoubtedly result in my abandoning the game. No hard feeligns. No muss. No fuss. Just won't do it.

I fought the whole kit'n'kaboodle at the same time, but when I see a bunch of baddies standing around with some named dude, I put everyone somewhere safe. So, I had my folks outside the door and sent in Eder to talk to the boss and then he flew out like a bat out of hell.. Hadn't read about the fight. Didn't know for sure what was going to happen, but my practice in games these days is to assume I'm going to get the shiv. However, some games have folks pop in behind the casters. I try to account for that, but sometimes it screws me. You can't account for everything and I think it diminishes a game if you don't have to reload every now and then at least on your first run.

So if Durance isn't the way Mr. Avellone intended him to be, what did he intend?

For me, kind of what Abel was saying, expansions just don't do justice to the story. The way the game was set up, all the expansions are inserted into the middle. That makes it tough because the end content is skewed by the extra levels. Frankly, there will be complaining no matter what, I figure that's fine, but the main story arc had such a note of finality I don't see how they can tack stuff onto the end as an expansion and shoving more stuff in the middle isn't going to work very well. Right now, it's like a big ol' Dagwood sandwich. More xpacs might be tasty, but you can only open your mouth so far. Squeeze the sandwich too hard, and you're going to have mustard, mayonnaise, and all manner of sandwich stuffins falling out o' the sides. What I'd really like to... you know what? I'm suddenly hungry. I'll figure out a better analogy after I eat.

Actually, the adra dragon remains the hardest fight. Now, I only just got into the second act in my Path of the Damned run, so maybe that will change. On normal and on hard, the adra dragon was the worst. Worse than the final fight. Far worse than Concelhaut. Now, you might call it metagaming, but the second I see a bunch of bad guys standing in a room with some unique looking character, I say to myself, "Self, this looks like a boss fight," and position myself accordingly. For that reason, Concelwhatzits wasn't so bad, although there is a lot of magic flying everywhere. So, he went down on the first shot. The first couple of times with the Alpine dragon, he beat me, but that wasn't too bad. The only fight that really kept getting me was the adra dragon. I think I have some sort of mad dog psychological thing going with her.

I agree with you about how some players will react, but I disagree about how far reaching it will be. If they put out another xpac and not a sequel, there are fans who would be similarly disappointed and they would likewise complain. I've already made my opinions known, so I won't reiterate them here. However, just as important, welcome to the board! I've only been a member a couple of months myself and there's one thing that's certain, if you don't dig yourself into the trenches, you can't help your side win the battle.

This, IMO, is even worse than the lack of autosave. I absolutely hate the fact that you get your characters positioned defensively, as one would when there's the likelihood of violence, but the game takes control and dumps your party right in front of the bad guy - and sometimes positioning your squishies right in front. Ye gods, that ticks me off. Yeah, and before anyone screams "Metagaming!" I would point out that, like real life, if certain situations result in the same sort of outcome, you start to get a feel for them. There are plenty of times in just about every game now when I absolutely know something's gonna happen and position my people before hand because of that the first time through. That's not metagaming. That's situational awareness. I don't mind if there's some logical basis for screwing with me after I've positioned, but arbitrarily moving my people really chaps my hide! Oh, and I agree with all the people about wanting to have my characters say what I want them to say. Like Doppelschwert (sp?) says up top, there's the fact that I want reputation, but just as importantly, my character will act a certain way and that pretty much compels me to try to choose dialogue options that reflect his nature. Anyhow, great thread/point/idea Jojo. As an aside, I might try that quick save thing when I face the adra dragon this run, Marky. She's a real bitch.

Good question. Actually, I thought about that whole limiting and expanding camping supplies thing myself after I'd posted and thought about addressing it, but, sometimes, you have to let things go. So, towards that end, I say it's time for a coffee break.

I don't understand this.

How does any of that noise affect your gaming experience? I'm not getting into the middle of the truly fine arguments about design because the only things I know about design come from reading more informed people in this forum. Speaking broadly from my limited knowledge, I will say this about options, though, and this is from direct observation lurking in these forums for a while and participating recently in the discussions: Asking for options if you really want something is a good tactic. If you can't get what you want in the first place by agitating, you can at least get it through a back door argument. First, someone agitates to get the exact thing he wants. Sometimes this works. I would point out that these people who end up pushing options don't typically start out asking for options in my experience. They push for what they want and, failing to get it, they push for a toggle granting what they want. Why don't they push for the option in the first place? Hmmm I don't hold it against folks wanting what they want. I don't even hold it against them wanting an option for what they want. I will say that granting every option in the base game is quite time consuming. Granting one thing that modifies something that's part of the base game might take resources that could go into putting something else in the game. In fact, since creating toggles can lead to strife in the development process, it might cause bugs or require a significant amount of extra work that prevents a bunch of extra content that could have ended up in the game. That's not an argument against options. I think arguing for options is splendid and folks here should argue away. What I'm saying is that some options are easier to provide, some options have broader appeal, and some options have minimal or even trivial impact on the design vision. Those three things would be my test to see if an option should be provided. To reiterate: 1. easy 2. broad appeal 3. conforms to the essential vision Moreover, these options don't exist on their own. There's the person who wants the option, the average player who should not be expected to wade through more options than basic rules in the first place, and players who will be impacted without even thinking about the consequences of including the option. Confused? bwahahaha My work is done! No, seriously, hear me out. I remember lurking around here years ago and I recently looked up some threads where people were arguing about combat experience points. First, a lot of people wanted to have combat experience, but that was never included. Instead, the compromise of a beastiary was included. Not exactly kill experience, but it did grant experience rewards for a lot of kills, especially early in the game. That's where the compromise ended, however, and a lot of folks still wanted combat experience. Many of them then offered a toggle. I don't know how easy that toggle would have been, but it definitely had broad appeal. There was at least a significant minority who wanted combat experience points. However, it completely failed to conform to the design vision. However, getting to the point of unforeseen consequences, if there had been an option to toggle combat experience points, a reasonable conclusion is that some people would have toggled to get the experience points and then been unhappy at the rate of leveling. That's already true in the game without combat kill experience. The design team would have been forced to account for some people getting a huge amount of experience points for kills while others getting none altogether. It's simply not feasible design. So, while it might have been technically easy, it would have been way more work on the level design and scaling end. The short version: The idea of options is typically, in my experience, is often a bad idea and used as a last resort by people who didn't want options but merely to get their way. It can eat up resources better spent on working towards moar content. While options can be good for the game, they should conform to three basic rules: 1. easy 2. broadly desired 3. aren't contrary to design vision. 4. I lied. There's a fourth. It should be simple to understand and not create more optional rules than base rules.

I really need to figure out a better format to get better pics on here. Anyhow, my Pale Elf PC with custom portrait courtesy of Sylph_14 and a Male Human thief adventurer with a custom portrait courtesy of thayllan. I'm not sure thayllan actually did the artwork for the human, but Sylph was definitely the artist behind the female one.

I agree, demeisen, and further, engineering the game in order to satisfy folks who want solo runs has diminished the need for the synergistic relationships you describe. I really wish solo character runs hadn't even been a consideration.

I've been playing the game again recently and I haven't had any tedium regarding camping supplies. I limit my resting as best I can, which is easier against some enemies than others. The effect is exactly what it's meant to be. After battles, I have to balance the overall health of my party, the number of per rest abilities and spells, and the nature of the obstacles my party faces in the particular area. The idea of using other consumables to increase decisions and consequences doesn't bother me. Bandages, for example, would be perfectly legit. I would submit that it boils down to simply tweaking the system right now. Instead of or perhaps in addition to one consumable, you add another. Meditation crystals sound iffy, but I suspect you were simply providing another example. I actually think the idea of creating more consumables would be even more tedious for some people and switching one consumable for another amounts to doing the same thing. However, I would be perfectly happy with the idea of tweaking it to simulate more situations. There is simply no way to address the idea of resting in computer games that works perfectly. I see the rest at will idea as being inherently flawed just as much as the camping supplies idea. Eye of the beholder had rations, iron rations, and whatnot that folks carried, but a cleric could cast create food and that made for a lot of edible paper weights. The IE games let folks rest more or less at will with some areas off limits and maybe some random encounters. The old SSI pool of radiance games were by and large the same if I recall correctly, but some areas had so many random encounters that they might as well have been no rest areas. Every single one of these systems had folks who didn't like them. We don't need the internet or online forums to know that. The fact that designers keep trying to address the deficiencies in each system demonstrates that there isn't one system that meets universal approval. Since that's the case, the argument against Pillar's camping supplies needs to amount to more than, "I don't like it this way." ...Or, more accurately, to be a compelling argument, it certainly needs more than personal preference.

Booo! I would rather they simply go classless before introducing multiclassing. That way, if you want a so called prestige class, create that class with your own vision rather than one that has a completely rigid path with minimal options so you have more 'freedom.' As far as the fun of dual classing in the IE games (and 2nd edition altogether) is simple, there was no compelling reason not to take fighter, especially as levels went higher. Every other stat has 3-18, but somebody thought it would be a great idea to introduce 'exceptional strength' which meant that instead of incremental bumps for the eight or so points above baseline you had a tremendous increase in one stat. Then, to top it off, you get twelve extra hit points in your very first level because you used d10 plus 4 for constitution (whereas non-martial classes received a max of plus 2). Now, I'm not saying everyone rerolled to 18/00 strength and 18 constitution, but the advantage was huge even if you didn't get completely perfect scores. I like the way that Pillars does the classes. If anything, like I said, I would even maybe prefer classless. I don't really hate prestige classes per se, but I would rather they arise organically from the setting and be uncovered and offered as a result of questing rather than a set goal identified straight away. One is an over engineered Monte Haul's dream and the other grows out of the campaign and reinforces the story.

I think that's fair enough, Baron, but Pillars two might come out the box much better and without needing as many tweaks because of their experience with Pillars one. At least that's how it looks from the outside. I don't think anything releases in perfection, so there's always that and, of course, if their goals are similarly ambitious, it might entail a lot of post release work. I'm sure there's a lot to be said for waiting for a while before playing the sequel, since they've earned a rep for yeoman's work after shipping. I just think they're better set to release a sequel that won't need nearly as much tweaking. I suppose mileage may vary, but I don't begrudge Major Changes for the sake of General Consumption because they pay for some of my Private Desires. Sorry, couldn't resist the bad puns. However, in all seriousness, I'm probably closer to the unwashed masses than the elite gaming crew. I would think that, yeah, a lot of developers would want an unshackled and uncompromising amount of freedom in making a game, I'd also like to think that they want their creative vision to appeal to the largest group possible. Not just because of commercial concerns, but also because you want to share your talents. Writing what you and three other people with rarified tastes consider the worlds greatest novel might give satisfaction, but I'm sure you'd rather that it had wide appeal and earned broad praise. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Mr. Sawyer making a mod for folks who didn't exactly like how everything came out, but some of us enjoyed our Vancian mages, our non-caster companions, and our hot mess ciphers. Even our confounding chanters, too!

I think the interweb testosterone makes it tough for folks to admit how cool Story Time is, but I love it. That kind of makes sense in that a lot of us have played these games so much we're practiced, but Story Time is absolutely awesome in that it allows me to include my wife, who hasn't wasted the sheer number of hours, days, weeks, months, years, and (how sad) decades playing these games. Hell, should she be ashamed that she can't play PotD? ...Or should I be ashamed that I can?

hehehe Gotta hand it to ya, Pink. You and the rooster are awesome!

First of all, thanks for taking the time to do this little demo for us! I plan on watching, but I promise I'll behave. <.< I voted for what I'd consider a basic party, which is the wizard, the cleric, the rogue, the ranger, the paladin, and the fighter (for whom I now vote by making this post). That gives us two divine casters, one arcane caster, two front liners, one support who can deal melee hurt, and one archer. That would be the six characters I would choose. However, I will disclaim that I'm a noob. I don't know anything, for which reason I'm identifying my choices at this time. If my choices are ill-informed and don't work well as what would be a basic essential novice party structure, but the tally is close enough that any of my votes would make any difference, please feel free to discard them. What I really mean by my votes is that I want to see the stereotypical old school party. Kind of like the fighter, wizard, cleric, and thief basic party of old.

There's going to be a live stream of the Pathfinder Adventure game due for release next month. Here's a link to the thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84609-twitch-stream/

Great. You bastards can pull the flip flops but the brandy and the Scotch get short shrift? I thought you were cool, Sking.

The stealth status thing might be tough since some folks will want their thieves to stay stealth mode as long as possible to get in a backstab. I'd like to see autoswitching of weapons since I'm a lazy bastard, but it would be tough because a lot of my characters have ranged as the secondary set. That also means if you don't know what you're going to fight before the battle, you might not have a melee (or ranged if the character is a ranged guy) switchable weapon in your other slot. Kind of makes you tempted to use the extra weapon feat or play one of those shark blokes. But I think it would be tough to implement the auto weapon switching. Auto removing the stealth, though, that would screw over folks using one of the class features.

Huzzah, you glorious bastard! Awesome! Splendid! Brilliant! I'll have to sign in incognito. I'm sure I've become persona non grata with all my bitching. But still.... <.<

I'm not a backer, so I don't have a horse in that race, but I have also found the regular rebalancing off-putting. I think, somewhat along the lines of what Jojobobo said up above, Pillars one was basically a gamble. Creating a whole new complex system with a bunch of design decisions they knew all along would have many detractors from a variety of corners was a calculated risk. I firmly believe that they understood that there would be a lot of post release tweaking to be done and released the game, a solid and fun game in its own right, with the vision of fine tuning some of the ideas over the course of several patches in order to nail down the broader concepts so that they could offer up a superior sequel. That's entirely conjecture on my part, but they never stopped tweaking the game, and I don't mean just around the edges. That probably makes it sound more mercenary than I view it. I think they had a choice, offer far less content with far more polish or a lot more content and then take the time to polish it. The former would have been a lot smoother on the front end, but the latter will allow them to put out a superior sequel. I liked the first time I played through, but I enjoyed it much more the second time, especially after two things. One, I stopped thinking about the controversies and just played the damned game. Two, they made small but significant changes with patching that enhanced the game for me. Remember, other than when I talk about my experiences playing the game, my post consists of wild assed guessing. I don't know what Obsidian was thinking and don't really care. It worked out well for me in the end, so all is well.

That's just crazy that someone would put their saves at risk just to remove content that is entirely optional to complete the game. You could think of every bit of the White March expansions as simply side quest content. What's the difference between the White March and side content in the base game. You probably like some side content better than others. Unless you're really overboard completnik, you probably won't get every achievement in the base game. I don't want to dog pile MonkeyLungs, but not only is there a lack of reason to remove the content, there's a very good reason to leave it. Don't put your saves at risk because there's optional content you don't like. Just don't go to the optional content.