Manveru123

Things do come in cycles, and rtwp peaked with the rts genre over turn of millennium. So is old enough to be considered dated. Is maybe now *just* old enough to be considered vintage, but that newish development. Kinda like synthwave supplanting chiptune. Like maybe some analogue moog thing is older than yamaha dx7, but u ask someone which sounds more dated and they more likely to answer the dx7. Also many old school side-scrolling 2d platformers look less 'dated' than the fmv surge of late 90s. Even tho latter was supposedly bleeding edge at one point. Point is appealing to age alone as measure of modern relevance not enough. Is like saying ur better off eating month old pastry rather than drinking fifteen year old bottle of wine. Thats an issue of poor encounter design, nowt to do with a system being turn-based. There are enough successful implementations of TB (SMT to name just one) to imply notion of TB combat not kiss of death. To suggest such without qualifying opinion as personal taste is rather hubristic. Like wizardry casts a longer shadow than almost any rpg and thats turn-based. Also many x-com / jagged alliance stans may consider such notion grounds for execution. lol. If RTwP is dated, then turn-based is ancient. You started the age discussion, now you're pulling out? Because I agree that it doesn't matter. What matters is what you find fun. In this particular example, RTwP games are the wine for me. It has everything to do with turn-based system. Unless you want to tell me that almost every game has terribly implemented turn-based combat? The only non-japanese acceptable examples I've ever played are Shadowrun series and DOS2. And even if I greatly enjoyed these games, I still only did one full playthrough because I couldn't be bothered going through the boring combat all over again. To put this into a perspective, I've finished BG2 (counting from first ever release to Enhanced Edition) a total of 27 times. Yes I've been counting. For me, RTwP changes the time spent with the game from 50 hours to 300+ hours, and I'm much less likely to buy a cRPG game that is only turn-based. X-com and Jagged Alliance are great examples of boring AF combat. I struggled as hell to finish either, not because it was too hard, but because I was falling asleep. And whoever introduced a "5% sure miss" thing should get shot. Repeatedly, to make sure it hits.

It's not. Deadfire is much more beginner friendly and the rules are considerably easier to grasp. In theory Kingmaker offers you way more customization with your characters, but unless you really know what you're doing (or use a respec mod lol), you can mess up pretty badly.

Board games are very popular actually. It's funny because first popular RPG games ever were actually turn based, RTwP came much later, and yet it is somehow "weird and old fashioned"? Please, that's just BS. Turn based combat in RPGs is boring, because it unneccesarily drags battles to the point of boredom. It makes me never want to do more than one playthrough, and I always struggle to reach the end, because it gets hella repetitive. DOS2 somehow managed to keep me hooked to the end, at least, but even then I just couldn't get to a second run when EE came out. While in Kingmaker, I'm slowly approaching 200 hours and the end isn't anywhere close. Is Kingmaker a better game? Hell no. Is it more fun to play? Hell yes. You mention Civilization, yet combat in that game was quick and simple, and the turn based aspect was much more important for everything else, like managing your country. It's a different genre anyway. RTwP is superior in pretty much every way.

The only thing you can do with the relics is sell them.

Pretty much every single spellcaster, including random fights like an Ogre Mage in Gullykin. I find the fact that AI no longer casts spells on characters who are immune to spells a significant improvement. Enemies move out of AOE. They call for help, they respond to what abilities you're using just like a player Wizard would. They even change targets whenever it's more beneficial, it's not uncommon to see a random archer start targetting your Wizard the moment his Stonenskin is down. The reactivity it gives to the enemies is a massive change and I dare to say that no cRPG game ever did it better than SCS. "Slightly" my arse. And in this, SCS contains plenty of blatant cheating. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong, but that's what it is. The AI shouldn't be able to know what you're immune to without testing it first, whereas in SCS it does know. (From what I've used it.) The AI can see what sort of protection spells you cast on yourself. Just as you can do when facing enemy Wizards, with both graphical effects and battle log. No cheating involved. Do you know what's cheating? Enemy Wizards randomly getting uninterruptable spells and cast time. I still remember how effing annoying that was. This is something that SCS removed.

How long after the game's release was the mod made? And I'm sure it took quite a lot of polishing. That is correct. But it was done. For free. And yet the games we get nowadays still have ****ter AI than SCS.

Pretty much every single spellcaster, including random fights like an Ogre Mage in Gullykin. I find the fact that AI no longer casts spells on characters who are immune to spells a significant improvement. Enemies move out of AOE. They call for help, they respond to what abilities you're using just like a player Wizard would. They even change targets whenever it's more beneficial, it's not uncommon to see a random archer start targetting your Wizard the moment his Stonenskin is down. The reactivity it gives to the enemies is a massive change and I dare to say that no cRPG game ever did it better than SCS. "Slightly" my arse.

Cough. Sword Coast Stratagems. Yeah I know it's a mod. But it's a good example of how can you improve the AI without simply buffing enemy stats.

Naaah that actually requires effort. Too much work.

Having fun is all that matters. That's what games are for. If fun keeps getting stolen away, the player moves to another game. And the developer sells to Microsoft to avoid bankrupcy ;D

That's because designers tend to work on theories and leave practice to drones. I'm sure this is a good idea guys!

So TL;DR: don't play my games until I release the final patch? Got it, that's actually good advice. You really think they have programmers whose only job is to add balance changes to the code? And you somehow think that this code is completely different from anything else in the game? I wish C# in Unity was that easy, I really do. But it's not. The people who "do" the balance passes are not the same ones who actually implement them in the game. Those who implement them are the ones who are also doing the bugfixing, because they're working on their own code anyway. And if you have to waste time tweaking damage numbers for spells because your PM told you to, you're taking a break from figuring out how to fix bugs in your code. And if your changes happen to accidentally break something along the way, boy, yer gonna have so much fun :D

Sounds like every rpg ever. "Viable" is a really broad term. Well what's the alternative? That every class is so good it trivializes the content? In the going example earlier in the thread Beckoner pre-nerf was that. Hell even now after the nerfs chanter summons are top notch. When some outlier trivializes most of the encounters in the game, I don't think the best answer is "buff up every other class to that level, then buff up the encounters to match." I'm sure some people enjoy having a ridiculously overpowered character. Personally I want my games to have some challenge to them so my tactics and choices have meaning. When I stumble on some god mode choice in the game it instantly drains my willingness to keep playing that game. Or you could just, you know, not use that "god mode" choice? Because if you know something is borked and you use it anyway, it's your own fault. On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who actually prefer characters like these and are glad to be able to use them. Feeling strong in the endgame is the epitome of a heroic fantasy. And why do you care what other people do in their own playthroughs? It's a single player game, it doesn't affect you.

Sounds like every rpg ever. "Viable" is a really broad term.

If you have a character focused on summoning suddenly become bad at summoning, your experience will not be positive. Or make an Evoker build around Missile spells. Remember when those were amazing? Yeah ok you can finish the game with any character running around naked, but if you're forcing yourself to do that just to not lose the time you invested in that character so far, then it's just silly.

I do, because after the Chanter nerf no one ever wanted to play a Beckoner, because they were the most useless subclass of a Chanter. You know that very well, Boeroer. Calling it a hyperbole is proof enough that he's just assuming without actually trying it out.

Since you have no idea what you're talking about, further discussion is pointless. Next time verify before assuming something, because speaking in third person does not make you smarter.

Thanos.

lmao. have u met people. if not, ur in for a wild ride fam. Have you actually played a game that does what I wrote? Because obviously not.

Do you only read every second line or something? Because I clearly said that respec doesn't solve everything because you can't change your class or subclass. Respec doesn't do **** if I'm stuck with a combination of classes that is suddenly weak because someone somewhere deemed it "op". There's a limit to this line of thinking. At some point buffing everything to be in line with the vastly OP choice often means the entire games balance goes out of whack. Enemies will have to become so powerful that they 1 or 2 shot any non-tank character just by looking in their general direction. It makes the balance of the game extremely prone to swinginess. You end up praying you get lucky, or learn to save scum. MMO games have tried this style balance, and so far it's just not humanly possible to pull it off. It's called powercreep and every game with constant content updates has it. Surprisingly, some companies (Square Enix for example; well, nowadays, because they used to be terrible at it too) do it remarkably well. The enemies get stronger, but your characters get stronger too. The scales keep going upwards. The bosses are doing more damage? Here's some new shiny gear with better defensive stats. Oh by the way, we buffed healers too! And while we were at it, some underperforming melee classes have been buffed aswell. THAT'S how you do balance.

If you want to use an old overtuned thing, or add new overtuned things there are plenty of mods for that. The unmodified game should be as close to balanced as possible. You want first time players who have read nothing about strategy or tactics ahead of time to have a consistent experience, and you can't deliver that if the various options (which they will be choosing from quasi-randomly) are wildly out of balance with each other. Most of those players are playing on difficulty levels where balance doesn't matter. All of the changes made over the months are completely irrelevant below PotD. Exactly. As long as the options are viable, that level of balancing is not needed. unless you establish that deadfire as played now is worse than deadfire as played months ago, am not seeing how such a balance "criticism" is noteworthy. there is respec in game, which thanks to continued patching efforts, now works. so, overall positive balance changes, which improve gameplay as described earlier in this thread, is bad in what way? constant efforts to improve game would appear to be a laudable developer effort. is new content which is being added via dlc and chances for breaking the game by accident has been a constant possibility. even so, developers is not abandoning an otherwise broken game and is instead attempting to fix those bugs and mechanical imbalances which tend to diminish gameplay. What "dimnishes gameplay" is having to face a situation where you spend 40 hours on a character that suddenly got ****e because a patch "rebalanced" him. And if you happen to play on PotD, well tough luck mate, muscle through or restart. How is that good? This is common in MMORPG and most players of that genre kinda expect it, but for single player, this is just dumb. Mod the game for yourself if you're not satisfied with it and leave my playthroughs alone please. And reset does not let you change your class or even subclass so it barely solves anything. Oh and speaking of Bards in BG2, at least Blade was somewhat viable ^_^ Fun fact: if all Obs did was buff weak classes, I seriously doubt anyone would ever complain. Instead they tend to just nerf whatever's strong at the moment, instead of pulling the "bad" options up to be competitive. If a class is so strong that it trivializes content, well then make some harder content!

It's still better than one dimensional main story progression we get from other games of this type.

Can you expand on the Pathfinder issues? I'd love to pick it up but it sounds like it needs more time to cook. It's been significantly patched and fixed already, and is in a perfectly playable state right now. And they're continuing to work on it including releasing DLCs. Owlcat is a very small company, maybe only like ten or fewer people in it. Yet they've done amazing things with the patching even while also adding in new things (features, classes, companions, areas, etc.). They're probably working 12-15 hours a day! It also has very strong mod support. You can really customize many different aspects of the game with them, if you're into that kind of thing. It also has a hidden true ending that barely anyone talks about (mostly because barely anyone knows about it :D), which requires you to make specific decisions in multiple parts of your whole playthrough. EDIT: there's a beta patch available that is supposed to help with loading times.

Your kingdom will never cause a game over on Auto. And if you're not on Auto, you can turn on "invincible kingdom" setting and it will be the same. I personally am somewhat fond of Effortless. Sounds like you got stat drained, these are the coloured dots next to your portrait. They go away after rest if you activate the option in menus.