Wormerine

Yeah, NWN is more of a toolbox than a game. I, personally, have little interest in user created content. While online actual RPG system seems like a neat idea, it’s not something I have any intend of trying. NWN2 was closer to game, which made me beat NWN campaign, in spite of not enjoying it one bit - IE games. As such NWN2 was for me, a great sequel after a disaster, though it comes more to what I want from the game, than quality of the game itself. That said, moving to 3D at the time was a mistake. It looked hideous, it still looks hedious. Even NWN2 still looks and plays worse than IE games.

Click on the “oooooo, shiny!” And than on the character portrait.

So, like 90% of people play it anyways. Excuse me, I started using empower on regular basis with beta 4. It’s too shiny to ignore.

Just to be clear when I say "madhouse" I mean fans, not Obsidian. As it is, I feel its fine. Passives aren't too exciting, but I didn't feel like the game needed those. Addition of an extra talent for a single class, means that if something seems essencial to my build I can pick it without too much regret. Overall I enjoy system and combat a lot. If on May 8th performance will be stable, and current bugs with missing keywords will be fixed it should be just fine. At least I have seen much much worse. When listening to many dev stories some really big changes are often made up to the very release. Its not like passives were rushed - they have been worked on since beta1 feedback.

Gameplaywise though, especially combat - I felt Divinity to be quite restrictive. It has a “feeling” of choice, because it’s a classless system. Instead of deciding if you are a ranger, or wizard, or priest type character you decide more as you go on. However, within one archetype I found the choices to be quite limited. Ambition of PoE1 was creating a class system and still provide a bit of flexibility of a classless system. That came with complaint of classes to being distinct enough. Deadfire made each class more restrictive and trusted in multiclassing to allow for hybrid builds. Complaints came that it is not possible to build hybrids when playing singleclass characters (mostly desiring weapon buffs of fighters). They made a lot of martial passives available to everyone and complaints are that they are not unique, or always desirable, or are underpowered, as if those passives are required to be picked when levelling up. Madhouse.

That’s a horrible, horrible idea, unless you design a completely different RPG, were combat is one of many possible paths not one of the main things you will be doing. Every class should be useful in combat, but not every class should contribute to combat in the same way. You can have different classes excel at different things, all be useful in combat. The idea that high DPS is the best way to go and all classes are only valuable if they go high DPS is just inaccurate. Class which can move freely around a battlefield and disable enemies via interrupt, stun, crowdcontrol, lowering defences etc. is useful in a team setting. Classes which can buff, absorb damage, move enemies around is a useful class. If someone likes their team to put out as much damage as possible and power through this way - it’s fine. Problem is though, that in PvE game it’s difficult to talk about balance, as AI is easy to exploit. I doubt glass cannon builds would survive in PvP mode without heavy support. Just finished a run with ascendant/helwalker which can be very easily shut down. If enemy wouldnt take my paladin bait he would be dead within seconds.

Ok, so there is one thing that really bothers me about siccoro - it has been bothering me since beta1 but here it’s more of an issue, as 3 of those at once aren’t tankable: It’s really difficult to spot it. It’s blends with environment way to well, and I have great difficulty seeing what range it has, where is it and how far is need to move to avoid it. Naturally I see when I get triple damage but once I leave a radious I would prefer not to run back, but I really can’t tell where it is most of the time.

So apart for complete lack of real life practicality, what is the problem gameplay/balance wise? Renaming half-swording to something else seems like the best way of solving the conflict. Adding additional requirements for modal to work, or switching modals around doesnt seem like the best approach. The discussion here seems to revolve around mechanics representing real life use of weaponary, which doesn’t seem relevant or meaningful in anyway. There are many things which don’t make any sense (healing injuries by sleeping? Food needed to sleep? You can move your ship freely without consideration for wind paths? Guns get reloaded very quickly, no friendly fire etc. Etc.)

It would make sense if one could stack concentration. I didn’t find a handy way of finding if your character has a concentration and how much. In addition, dual wielding full-attack abilities which do interrupt are very handy, as they will interrupt with each attack. I did a run with a default rogue, and gave her two pistols. One use of “Ring the Bell” would do decent damage + provide 2 interrupts, pretty much guaranteeing a spell cancel.

Beckoners are ridiculous.

Fallut structure is a bit different though, as combat is part of the game but not core part of the game. It is absolutely possible to create a smart, charismatic guy with a high speech ability and play the game that way. In PoE combat is integral part of the experience. Class that doesn't contribute in combat is no good. Beyond unlcking some unique dialogue lines, no it doesn't.

But does it matter? Should development resources be spent to make sure the game is not beatable with a solo character? Ha! No, by any means. I would call it a symptom rather than rather than a cause. Would prefer to see more interaction between characters, a more strategy and more engaging gameplay. I think a side effect of a better design would be that solo runs would become impossible, not that solo runs should be impossible, if that makes sense. Character creation is all about choosing strenghts and weaknesses of your characters. Than you compose party to make up for those weakneses and bank on your strenghts. That's the theory at least. If one character can carry encounters all by himself that means that something is off - how valuable each attributes are, how enemies are composed, how they exploit your weaknesses. I don't think it has to be a big issue - imbalance doesn't ruin singleplayer game, especially if such imbalance has to be discovered via lenghty experimentation (or reading online guides).

Good for you. With every year I find it harder and harder to find games I am interested in playing. Looking at 2018 right now and beside Deadfire there is nothing. Maybe Shadow of Tomb Raider due to nostalgia, but it will be a deep, deep discount for me as I didn’t love the reboots so far. Civilization6:R&F lost my attention quicker than I expected. AAA became such a barren field of boredom. That's why I mainly play $15-20.00 indies, have much more quality content and better writing than AAA games. If you are into the indie market, it's not too hard to find games to be interested in because there are so many gems. Well, if you have some recommendations I would appreciate a short Private Message:-)

Good for you. With every year I find it harder and harder to find games I am interested in playing. Looking at 2018 right now and beside Deadfire there is nothing. Maybe Shadow of Tomb Raider due to nostalgia, but it will be a deep, deep discount for me as I didn’t love the reboots so far. Civilization6:R&F lost my attention quicker than I expected. AAA became such a barren field of boredom.

None of the Pillars were balanced with solo play in mind. It was stated that what games are balanced around are classic and veteran full party comps. To me the fact that game is beatable with one character is indication of flaw in its design - there is too little synergy between characters. Compare it to something like recent Into the Breach which is based on simple core rules which gain complexity when interacting with each other. Games like Pillars have a lot of number, rolls, buffs, debuffs, but in the end the depth of gameplay just isn’t there. I feel like the concentration and interrupt mechanic is a step in right direction - simple system but one which has consequences. But than again, what I would like to see is a game which takes core concepts of games like PoE (party based, customisable characters, real-time combat etc) but goes back to real basics and rethinks them so they make sense in computer setting- how an attack works: does it need to be a roll for a hit? What effect an attack has? How does races’ size influence combat regarding positioning, attack range, control over combat area? The PnP system is an over complicated mess, with few interesting decisions to make and lots of number crunching to do. PoE did a fine job in reviving it, Deadfire does a fine job in improving upon it, but I am not sure how sustainable it is in a long run.

I agree. Push was working fine in previous beta build, but here some really silly things are happening. Maybe push should have a range limit? My tank can get completely surrounded by enemies attacking from the front: the first enemy whom he engaged gets pushed all the way to another side and is free to rampage in the back line without a way to really stop it. Push is a neat feature but needs a bit more restriction.

Maybe not exactly related but when creating a full party of custom mercenaries, two of them spawned and got stuck in terrain near tikiwara marketplace. I fixed it by removing them from me party, moving a bit to a side and adding them again.

I would say that narrative wise (mostly pacing and charm), BGs do have some advantage over PoE, but mechanically I gained new respect to Pillars after replaying BGs. Mechanics wise the biggest advantage BGs has its obfuscation. Attributes are exciting as game doesn’t explain what each attributed does. Open the manual though and the charm looses its power. Tying enemies’ resistance to enchantment level of weapons is bad bad bad. Too many spells, useful only to dispel certain others spells, which protect you from those few selected spells. Enchanting when I had no idea what’s going on, tedious once I grasped on how things work. Not to say that PoE is beyond improvement.

I have a question: when we discuss usefulness of a class why do we always talk about DPS? Like only DPS? How about utility? Mobility? Flexibility?

Ok, I wouldn’t mind if game wasn’t beatable with a solo character. Not to ruin fun for people who do soloruns but I can’t see how one could design a good team based game, which is also beatable with one character. If a difficulty requires a careful coordination of 5 characters, surely it shouldn’t be beatable with just one.

Yes. Most of the encounters were poorly designed, and XP overfloat is way too big, especially with White March. Content scaling doesn’t really fix the problem. It has little correlation to current discussion.

Why you say so? Yen certainly wasn’t in love with Geralt before the third wish. Whenever it was Djinn’s magic, or Geralt caring that started it - well, that’s the part unexplained in the short story, and one PR cleverly took an advantage of.

He didn’t. It was changed before the post was mad . This fight isn’t problematic design wise in PotD only, though it fleshes out its problems. Harder doesn’t necessarily mean better. Complaints here aren’t about it being per say too hard, but rather about it being a bit bull****. I didn’t find it fun in its current iteration, I didn’t find satisfaction in beating it.

Why would anyone go to spend holiday in California? :I why does going for holiday has anything to do with Deadfire? It’s not a vacation resort simulator. Call of Duty locations aren’t places anyone would want to spend their holidays at, and yet for many years it has been a top seller. But even so, that’s beside the point. Why do you think a brighter, more colourful scheme would fit Deadfire’s world better? It’s hardly an otimistic world. Deadfire is full of conflict, fight for colonies, with a resurrected god rampaging around. Do you think a brighter colour palette would express this kind of world better? I am pretty sure Obsidian artists can make decisions without making polls on what random people’s favourite vacation resorts are.

I am all for it, as long as they do not add their own content.