Pel

Being able to read is an extremely large part of this game lol... If you can't finish this "wall" quickly then maybe your lack of reading skills and/or dislike of reading is trying to tell you something very important about yourself

That didn't really keep from the companions in Planescape: Torment being some of the most memorable characters in video-game history. True, but that game had exotic and wacky characters around every corner, so the oddness was more normalized because the spectrum of oddness was insanely wide. If in Pillars 2 we are around mostly aumaua and humans and we don't get the chance to pickup at least a couple of them as eager adventurers (sidekicks), the world may end up feeling a bit contrived.

We need more "boring" humans to balance out the game and make the unique, wacky/zany creatures and characters more special and stand out more! It's just like in life when you need some variety, like depressing lows, to truly experience the sweetness of happiness. If the majority of characters are oddballs then they won't be very memorable because their relative oddness is marginalized.

And yet PS:T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, PoE and Tyranny did that just absolute fine (and I'm going to deliberately exclude NWN and NWN2 from that list, let alone DA:O, KotR 1/2 and ME trilogy-apart-from-the-last-fifteen-minutes-of-3, which didn't even have any "rest"-like abilities) and collectively, all of the above are the most immersive games I've played (well maybe not NWN 1 so much). PS:T, in fact, is still, in my opinion, the best RPG of all time (and among the top three best games period of all time, alongside TIE Fighter and Dungeon Keeper 1) and in that game in was actually required some effort to actually DIE. If I wanted to play Dark Souls (or equivilent), I would play Dark Souls (or equivilent). I emphatically do not want to play Dark Souls (or equivilent). PoE was the first game of its type - my favourite sort of game - in literal decades and it was exactly the game I wanted. So I am afraid I am going to have to politely draw my line in the sand here and say: no, no, I do not want PoE to be made into a different sort of Dark Souls. That genera is still getting plenty of (popular) support, so I don't feel that by saying so I am denying people the chance to have the sort of game they want made by anyone - which is what the shift of the last few years was doing to me; until Obsidian came to the rescue with Pillars of Eternity. I'd like to keep at least one or two companies* making games for MY type of gamer, thank you. (*And it is pretty much literally two at the moment, Obsidian and Paradox Development, plus some potentials kickstarted (but for those, the proof will be in the pudding as always.)) None of that is "tedium," which was the gist of the point I was making with that comment. (I would aso question why, given subjective nature, it is not "fun" to be subjected if one is so inclined, to any of your aforementioned criterion. Perhaps "entertaining" would have been a better fit, I will grant you, but my point was "tedium" is not any of that.) I mostly agree and I don't want a rogue-like or rogue-light experience either. I was just giving an example that there IS an audience for hardcore, challenging games (and this audience or subaudience or individual gamers or whatever you want to call them usually do play multiple games from multiple genres), therefore I don't think it should be out of the question to make the game a bit more difficult in the resource management side of things, as this will make the world feel much more dangerous and unforgiving, thus more organic and immersive.

If, on the table-top, my DM suggested this as a way he was going to run his games, I would walk out the door so fast I would have left before he started speaking. (And I say that as quarter-century long-running DM who considers his micro-management (like making the PCs pay for their food expenses) as it is only tolerated by his players as foilable.) I'm not sure what my players would do if I suggested that to them - actually, y'know what, I'mma ask them. I'll get back to you if they don't lynch me. Ye gods, it would make Rolemaster played to the hilt look benign by comparison. All of that applied would be a unilaterally terrible idea. It would make the game unfun, tedious and - especially with the inability to save - arbitarily inconvenient, Save points are a legacy of primitive computer technology and they have no place in a modern RPG - nor even in one twenty years ago. And there is nothing worse than having to do the same thing over and over because you keep dying at some late point; especially if you are going to be actively punished for going away, elimianting the chance of coming back with a different approach. (It was to the detriment of JPGs that they still (at least in the PS2 era ones i last played) did that.) Let alone that it absolutely forces players to play one, very specific way - your way - when giving the players the option to set their own difficulty is becoming more common. If such as system was implemented, I can very much imagine it would lead to far more people ragequitting (and then that's lost revenue for Obs when they say "never buying a game from them again, that was [inesrt expletive here]" becaue angry people do that) or just using a walkthrough from the start. But I'd take even Dragon Quest 8's terrible "you can only ever rest and save in inns" over that - though only barely, since it was so crap a system I never made it past the first boss. It really, really, REALLY isn't. If at any point, one of the design ideas of a game designer (i.e. "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun") is "create tedium" they need to give up their day job and take up a career in buracracy or something. I'm not a fan of all these "speaking for other people" blanket statements regarding people being extremely upset and ragequitting from having to replay the same areas after dying, etc. We only have to look at the success of the Dark Souls series and other very challenging games to see that there are many different types of gamers, some of whom absolutely love a great challenge, as it tests and improves their reaction times, memories (pattern recognition), willpowers, work ethics, and/or mental acuities, etc, depending on the game. Edit: So what I'm saying is that sure, these hardcore mechanics may make some people dislike the game more, but you can't deny that it will make other, different types of people like the game more, and just because you side more with the "dislike the game more" crowd in this instance or that technically it will decrease profits by a minute amount, doesn't mean the decision is objectively bad if it fits within the developer's vision of making a great game. And it's important to note that most great games usually aren't at odds with themselves. For example, you can't really want your players to be happily engrossed in a dangerous fantasy world which was supposed to be at least as immersive as the Infinity Engine games, and then have a ton of hand-holdy, unpunishing mechanics that allow said players to soundly rest in the WILDerness or not have to deal with resource management - you can't have your cake and eat it too. And one final retort to the "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun" claim. Games don't have to be fun to be popular, engaging, and more. They just have to give something worthwhile to the player: give some amount of emotion (sadness (story-driven games about death/cancer/etc), fear (horror games), thrill (first person theme park games), etc), learning experience, benefit, or if you are a masochist, make the player suffer as a sort of life lesson, etc. But yes, fun games are awesome.

I think it's important to understand that different people want different things from their gaming experiences (and even those things can suddenly change at a mood's whim or over a longer period of time - and naturally many people's desires and "fun needs" are at odds which each other, meaning that they don't even really know what they want). So to say one system is "idiotic" or "tedious" in a situation where all of these feelings are incredibly subjective/relative and while leaving out the possible pros of a nuanced system while only addressing the cons is intellectually dishonest and will run our conversation in endless circles.

Great thread idea! Completely agree that it's important to give ourselves and the devs some positive vibes and love in between all the waves and waves of criticism. So to the devs, thank you for putting your hearts and souls into making Pillars 2 great: the archipelago setting, the subclasses, the multiclasses, the cleaner lighting, the dynamic weather, the relationship system, (the upgradeable boat/warship), the additional companions (aka sidekicks), the longer-cast-times-but-more-powerful spells, the engaging writing, the beautiful artwork, the improved skill system, our favorite companions returning, and all the little details that may go unnoticed by most but still make the game more engrossing and fun, all sound AMAZING!!! :D

Well considering we know next to nothing about how this new system works I have my doubts about any "inherent" reasons you can see. Could Josh's new system fail? Of course. But without having more information and potentially seeing it in practice I think it'll be hard to say. The fact that this system could fail shouldn't stop us from trying to come up with something better than the vancian shibboleth. Regarding the multiples post, I don't believe it's against the rules (on this forum at least). However if responding to multiple posts it's generally considered good etiquette to use the "Edit" and/or the "multiquote" function to condense everything into one post rather that clogging up the thread. Just trying to be helpful. Sorry, I don't mean to imply that it will fail in any way, just that it may not be optimal or ideal, mostly meaning that I hope muh Wizards feel like they are slinging some deadly magic and not tickling enemies into submission with lackluster spells over and over most fights. Edit: And with the lengthy cast-times yet powerful spells change, I will most likely have at least some of what I desire - I just hope the unempowered spells which are left short-cast or medium-cast aren't too unsatisfying so that I can have a wide arsenal of fun, satisfyingly powerful spells to choose from. But I definitely see that these short/medium-cast spells will need to be balanced to be weaker if Vailian magic is indeed cut from the game and the devs are firmly set on making each class not too much more relatively powerful or less powerful than the next at every level. Like I briefly implied before, the devs have a choice to make between "overbalancing" a single-player crpg which will make players of every class happy yet will leave the world feeling relatively tepid and contrived, or constructing a nostalgia-boner-inducing game which has life-breathing, exciting, organic imbalances and incredibly OP/broken spells, builds, and items - and it appears that the leads have mostly chosen the former, which my "hardcore tactical" side says is awesome, but my "wants to be deeply immersed in a believable, engrossing fantasy rpg" side says is not ideal.

Gromnir isn't a troll, he's a half-orc. Also, it's bad form to post multiple times in the same thread without intervening posts. Well it depends on how they balance it. Your scenario is a false dichotomy as there's no inherent reason why empowered and empowered spells can't both be satisfying. I can see many inherent reasons, but they all depend on the person who is playing and are all subjective, as is the classification of something being "satisfying" or not. But going by the "almost everything is subjective" law won't get us very far, which is why it's nice for people to voice their concerns and desires in text, poll, or wallet-purchasing-power form so the devs can get more insight into what the players want and what they think they want but actually have misleading or misinformed (note: not wrong, just coming from a place where they only state the cons and leave the plentiful pros in the dark) opinions about (for example: whining and being frustrated at being ambushed while resting and "having" to save scum in a supposedly dangerous world). Edit: Also, apologies for posting multiple times. I didn't think I had to wait an ambiguous amount of time 'til posting, seeing as my posts were responding to different people and mostly addressing different things.

Because there wasn’t enough trash encounters in PoE1… Am I the only one who enjoys killing trash mobs if the gameplay mechanics are designed in a fun way? The way most posters and Obsidian devs talk about trash mobs, you'd think the best option would be to just remove them altogether because of how "unfun" they apparently are to most people. Yet this seems like a bandaid fix to the true, more glaring issue, "Is combat itself even fun?". Personally, I don't find throwing in one unkillable super-tank into the fray who hits like a kitten while I cast mostly the same spells and use the same tactics over and over for each encounter incredibly fun. The more I think about it, the more I remember that I had much more fun in the old IE games where there was a risk involved (ambushed while sleeping) in resting to regain my powerful spells, rather than soundly sleeping the night away and spamming the same per encounter abilities/spells over and over - with Pillars 1 it feels a bit like I'm playing an action RPG in that the short-term gameplay is, indeed, more fun and less annoying/frustrating, but the long-term fun factor suffers due to repetitiveness, which is bound to occur in these CRPGs which are played for 50+ hours. And yes, it's not like there was an insane difference between the repetitiveness of Pillars and the Infinity Engine games, but there were undoubtedly more immersively realistic RPG elements which are missing from the former which reduce its overall, long-term "believable world" gestalt. And to the people saying "But then save-scumming and constant reloading ruins the experience!". Then don''t use it. That's the same response to the questions that stem from lack of willpower like "But what if the players just download a cheat software and bump their strength to 100?" Hopefully most are smart enough to realize that they will be tarnishing their own experience if they cheat in these varying matters - let's hope Obsidian gives us the benefit of the doubt that most of the CRPG fanbase have a good enough attention span & willpower and aren't afraid to see the game over screen once in awhile in order for them to tailor their game to its most immersive, engaging, thought-provoking, and fun level (though in this Information Age in which so many forms of media are successfully competing for people's attention, their profits may suffer too much if too many players put down this relatively frustrating "old-school" game in 2018.)

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol... Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

Agreed. As "annoying" as being ambushed by monsters while travelling or resting in the WILDerness was, it made the worlds feel SO much more alive and dangerous, thus making our minds become much more engaged and thus immersed in the world.

Actually I expect all spells to feel more powerful in PoE2 than they did in PoE1. Spells will increase in power as you level up unlike in PoE. In addition spells are generally going to have longer cast times that can be interrupted causing you to lose the spell and thus will be more powerful to compensate. And for the record, I'm an IE fanboy and I can't wait to dance of the grave of vancian casting. Let's hope so. They still have to make the decision(s) to balance around the empower mechanic as to either make empowered fireballs, etc, 1-shot most trash mobs or 2/3- shot while leaving the non-empowered fireballs feeling weak sauce. It's a tough decision that I don't even know how to truly answer because I personally want an insanely challenging/unforgiving PotD game while still having fun and feeling power-trip-inducing power-spikes.

The removal of Vancian casting, while beneficial for helping smooth out balancing and pacing issues, does also unfortunately remove a lot of the great immersive excitement and power one feels while playing a Wizard (or other Vancian-magic caster). Obsidian already acknowledged that most people really didn't like how weak fireballs felt in Pillars 1 compared to the Infinity Engine games, and now I'm assuming that virtually all spells will be like this while using them without the contrived "Power-Up!" empower mechanic. As someone whose favorite class has always been Wizard, I am greatly saddened by this choice. I just hope Obsidian veritably remembers that this is a single player game before its too late, ergo balancing should not be their number 1 priority - a cool, fun, organic, nostalgia-inducing world should be ahead of balancing imo. Edit: And I apologize in advance if someone already mentioned the same stuff because I haven't had time to read all 13 pages of this thread yet, but what about making camping supplies cost A LOT more on higher difficulties instead of limiting the max number of possessable supplies as a solution to rest spamming? I truly believe this would greatly reduce the amount of annoyance us Hard/PotD players faced when having to sporadically traverse back to an inn through multiple loading screens to re-up on our measly 2-max supply limit while still keeping the game challenging. Having extremely expensive supplies on the harder/hardest difficulties will give us more choice in the form of economic decisions and breathe more organic life into the game, imo, while still enabling us to keep Vancian casting. But I do know how headstrong the leads of Obsidian are when it comes to changing these seemingly already set-in-stone mechanics, so sadly my plea (and the pleas of other similarly minded Infinity Engine fanboy/girl gamers) seems like a pipe dream at this point.

Not a big fan of having one basically unkillable tank balancing in games. I think it's much more fun having off-tanks (and needing them for tough fights) so that fights and strategies don't devolve into taking every defensive talent/skill/armor imaginable for a tank and sending him in to do virtually no damage but be unkillable and an insanely OP, AI-breaking distraction (though if the AI was better at calculating enemy hp/damage ratios we could surpass this balance issue). As a hardcore tactical player, I'm also not a fan of the 5 party limit even if it is easier to balance, as easier =/= better gameplay. I love having more pieces, variables, and challenges to play with, and 6 party members instead of 5 definitely fulfills this relative improvement.