protopersona

Does this count as irony? Or is it just plain old hypocrisy?

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.

It's not stress really, just wanted to talk about the mode a bit and see if there's anything we can bring up. It's a discussion, nothing more.

Once I left some companions without any equipment because I didn't plan on having them on my party soon. Then I found myself in a ship battle with them naked. Wait you don't go into ship battles with your current party?

So the fact that Obsidian have made zero comments about the turn based mode leak leads me to believe that it was a real, actual leak and not some marketing stunt. So I'm fairly sure it will be coming back sometime down the line. In the spirit of that I thought we could speculate about things related to the future turn based mode. What balance concerns or outlier cases can you think of? Any fights that might need adjustment to prevent tedium and dragging on excessively? This isn't really a thread to debate the merits of RTwP vs TB, or to talk about the inherent problems with TB (immersion breaking and takes longer to play). The point of this is to give Obsidian a heads up on problem areas they may want to give a few looks at in advance before releasing the mode.

Yes, it was quickly patched out the day it leaked.

Nah, even Itumaak was able to bite Eder. Chuck's beard can bite Eothas.

Sorry couldnt help but pounce on this. *hard* disagree fam. World could use more self-awareness and empathy, not less. I don't see "thinking logically" and "self-awareness and empathy" to be mutually exclusive. You can feel sympathy for a person while still acknowledging that the perspective isn't rational. My point was rational thinking should be more common than emotional thinking. Sadly most cultures teach you to go with how you feel about something instead of analyzing facts.

God damn it. Good trolling. Was gonna roll my eyes and pass this one by.

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. Are you referring to Final Fantasy 14 when you bring up doing buffs right? Cause you've definitely got a minority opinion there. The forums and subreddit have gone ballistic over a large number of nerfs over the years. That's including the times where they have completely redesigned classes from the ground up and drastically changed how they played (Turret bards in Heavensward come to mind). They've only done better recently because they play it extremely safe now. Which in turn has made the grind very boring. Also the standard power creep of MMO gear is not really relatable to a single player RPG. FF14, and any MMO really, they never end. They constantly need to give you new rewards, and new challenges to use those rewards on. Deadfire has a stopping point though. There's no reason to accept power creep. If something is the de facto choice because it's power level is drastically ahead of everything else, buffing everything else up to be drastically overpowered is not the solution. Most of the time nerfing something makes the overall game better. Doesn't matter how those nerfs make people feel. Personally I think the world would be better off if people ignored how they feel and analyzed things logically.

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.

Or, and I think this is REALLY unlikely, an example of Poe's Law.

You could just use the Only Less XP mod from Deadly Deafire. The work has already been done for you.

So is there a way to mute or hide a poster? Just curious...

Pretty sure using a mod to edit your character to have a 3rd class does not count as a bug.

I think that might be the most positive thing I've read about Penetration in Deadfire.

I'm not gonna sit here and claim I have all the answers. My point has little to do with the success or failure of other games. Especially in a time where games like Final Fantasy 15 and the newest Tomb Raider series can sell millions and still be "disappointing." If a game has a big surge in sales after adding a turn-based mode, I don't think publishers are going to go "Wow, I guess they did make a good game after all, it just needed time to catch on." I'm pretty sure the response is going to be "The turn based feature moved more units, maybe we should invest more in that." I was really only speaking in terms of this game's possible situation, and I could have made that clearer.

The Pathfinder franchise has a much larger and more established fanbase really. Familiarity can make something seem better in comparison to something new. So basically the system they are already comfortable with makes more sense. The new system by comparison is illogical. Even though both are complete abstractions that don't stay completely logical or consistent.

I'm gonna find it very entertaining if MaxQuest has spent all this time delving deeply into the game's code and mechanics, but the thing that gets him the most recognition is his ability to proficiently apply filters over pretty pictures. Not to downplay his work in this thread cause it's great. I just feel like the first thing requires way more effort than the second.

If Deadfire gets a big enough sales boost from this though, all it's going to do is further reinforce the idea that turn based sells better than RTWP. Thus providing even less incentive for turn based games to add an optional real time mode. But other recent TB RPGs have done poorly, sales-wise: T:ToN, BT4; and Realms Beyond barely made it across the line for its Kickstarter. TB comes across as being extra popular because TB fans tend to be much more vocal and insistent on their preference than RTwP fans. Because what people don't seem to realize is that combat is not everything in an RPG title. T:ToN and BT4 sold badly because they sucked, not because they had turn-based combat (although in ToN case, it was really horrible). This is exactly what I was trying to say here. Neither D:OS2's good sales nor T:ToN/BT4's poor sales have much if anything to do with TB combat. There is no correlation. Separately, if you look at people's comments. either here or in other forums, RTwP fans will usually say something along the lines of: I (much) prefer RTwP, but I don't mind playing some TB games (which is my own position). By contrast, TB fans will usually say: I won't touch the game unless it has TB combat. A side note on @Manveru123's T:ToN comment: I liked and enjoyed playing T:ToN. I found the story interesting, liked most of what was in the game, and my only issue was with how very short/small the game was. And in parallel, I only recently played Ps:T for the first time, as a prelude to playing T:ToN, and found Ps:T utterly boring and silly. I've long heard these forum stories about the "incredible story" and "amazing companions" in Ps:T and was extremely disappointed. You say there's no correlation, but we aren't talking about the effect a turn based feature has on sales. We are talking about how companies interpret the sales of a turn based game. Historically game publishers have no earthly clue what makes a game good or bad. Thus, they try to attach the sales situation to what features a game has. "Turn based games selling better = turn based makes a game good" is how they have historically seen it when compared to similar situations. Just like how every FPS game needed a multiplayer mode back in the day, even if it was just tacked on and bad. It's not about what makes the game good, but what they think is making a game sell more.

Btw, I've accumulated a few portraits since the release of Deadfire. Decided to share: All water-colored (with _convo and _si). Example: You can download them here: mod page Oh my gods I love you so much right now. EDIT: Can you add the godlike types into the file names so the new portraits disperse themselves into the lists in the correct places? Everything else goes in the right place but all your godlike pics go jumbled up by themselves at the end of the godlikes list.

One example from the top of my head: pretty sure Temple of Elemental Evil did not look worse than Baldur's Gate. And it had tactical combat implemented very well. Yet barely anyone talks about (or even remembers) this game. ToEE got a lot less press and was overshadowed by Neverwinter Nights. Isometric games had become played out by that point after so many RPGs had used them. The 3d graphics of NN were the shiny new thing by that point. Really it's the same scenario, just a different graphics jump. I mean there's a reason there's so much statistical evidence that shows graphics sell better than gameplay. Back on topic, I'm genuinely torn on this feature. I was planning to have a complete game run when the last DLC dropped. Then they leaked the possibility of a turn based mode. Now I'm not sure if I want to run the game in real time or wait even longer for the turn based feature.

You know that P:K has a "slow mode", right? You use the "v" button for it... It has a slow mod, but Pathfinder's whole combat system was supposed to be played as turn based, all the classes, feats and such are designed around the idea of turn based combat. No matter how slow you make it, it won't change that. Deadfire on the other hand, is designed for a computer, as a real time game with pause. You could say the same about AD&D. There were both rtwp and turn based games made in this system, guess which of them were more popular? Totally agree about Deadfire tho. Turn based IS however much easier to implement on consoles, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the direction the game - or POE3 - goes. I think the relative popularity of the Infinity Engine games has more to do with the visual polish than with being a better implementation of the system. The gold box games were a blocky pixelated mess even in their prime, but were truer to the game system itself. They were also much deeper than what Baldur's Gate and later games accomplished, outside of maybe Planescape. Tabletop RPGs have been turn based out of necessity, but the abstraction really helps when dealing with a party. I think real time is much more suited to games where you're only managing a single unit. Probably the main reason Obsidian tried so hard to make a decent AI system in the sequel. There's just too much for the average person to keep track of in the heat of battle.

If Deadfire gets a big enough sales boost from this though, all it's going to do is further reinforce the idea that turn based sells better than RTWP. Thus providing even less incentive for turn based games to add an optional real time mode.

I'm fine with longer encounters if it means I have more room to make tactical choices. Currently I've been mindlessly firing off the same rotation in every combat and only changing anything if there's something to react to.