Wormerine

Sure, but how many times have you been fooled by those before? I have. Went to see a movie because trailer looked really really cool (cough Watchmen cough), got exited for games based on scripted trailer or promises. Once one generation gets wiser, the new one will follow. If some tricks will become obsolete, someone will come up with new ones. There is no doubt marketing works. Just being familiarised with a product ties you to it. When offered to go to a movie, will you choose to see one you never heard about or something more familiar? Probably the 2nd one.

I'm sorry, but I just had to pick this one up. Which planet do you live on exactly? I mean, here on Earth, among our species who are called humans, enough marketing and manipulation of audience can make you a ****ing dictator A right marketing, of a right product, at a right time yeah. Better to make noise than not. It is a factor and an important one but not the only or main factor. I am opposing to the idea that people like “bad” things just because they are widely marketed or popular but that they provide something they want.

True. This is why we have horrible games which are successful in gaming, same reason why horrid movies make millions or dreadful music makes billions. There are hundreds of examples of this, if we are being honest, as it's the same medium (entertainment) which stimulates the same portion of the human brain (the prefrontal cortex). Not really that important to discussion but I have to disagree. Certainly, there is an element of social pressure and exposure but I really don’t believe it’s as simple as that. Many people will like movies, music and games, which are hated by people actually interested in them. Yes, they can like them because someone they like likes it, or they pretend to like it, or they grew up with it. However, that would suggest that enough marketing and manipulation of audience should lead to success. And while marketing is important not many products really stick. Also solving the issue of people liking “bad stuff” should be as simple as introducing them to the “good” stuff. But it doesn’t work that way. Media can fill different roles in peoples lifes. While complete lack of balls in AssCreed games bores me to death, another individual, which treats the medium more casually and doesn’t put much thought into it finds it a nice, relaxed way to spend an evening. Nice graphic, animation, easy combat, boxes to be ticked off. I can try to introduce to people films with great characters, cinematography and scripts but they will get annoyed, because they don’t know what is happening after spending 10 minutes of the run time on a phone. I can talk all I want about brilliance of Beethoven or Mahler symphonies, how personal they are, how innovative, how elegant but complain “I can’t dance (aka. move my butt back and forth while being drunk) to it”... is valid. Some people don’t look for complexity, or difficult choice or to be stimulated emotionally when playing a game. They watch transformers movies for some explosions, noise and Something more might break movie for them. Hey, I don’t have much appreciation for food. Put a really fancy dish in front of me, and I probably won’t appreciate it, as I want my food to be convinent and quick&easy to consume. It’s just not something, which holds my value to me.

Still, humans have a history of reacting badly to thing they are not used to. There are plenty examples of works that after some time passed were universally accepted as good or brilliant, while at the time of creation turned people off, because its not what they used to, and yeah, more often than not it was a majority that reacted negatively - both plebs and educated in the subject. Of course, it also works the other way - you can make something and think world of it, and even gain acclaim, while in really it its kinda s***. World is weird that way. Whenever fans are right and wrong in their feedback, such feedback should be provided and it is on devs to analyze said feedback and decide whenever it is valid; if fans are complaining about symptoms, while their issue actually comes from much deeper; or if they are plain dumb and want something they are used to, and will in time get converted (or a product will reach its actual audience). I feel that once again we focus on individual words, while actually arguing for the same thing. I don't think Gromnir ever said that Obs should ignore fans' opinions (though to be honest with his prose, I am never 100% sure) but that they shouldn't change things only because people complained. Similarly, I don't think other people would want Deadfire's design to be purely based on results of a survey. I have been wrong before though... so let the fight go on. I am entertained.

I am just really irritated that when we say "enemy scaling" Bethesda RPGs are constantly brought up from the opposition. I never asked for Bethesda scaling. You could use Bethesda RPGs and use them as an argument to not use open world design, put writing and voiceacting in your game, don't create action/RPGs hybrid etc. etc. Scaling in those game really really does't work.

Wasn’t “Crown of the faithful” completely broken though? I am not someone who likes to do a math, while playing RPGs but I did find that this spell pretty much wins encounters. Someone killed me? Cast “crown” and just not die next time.

I have been wondering about if for a while. Lvling system seems like a thing devs put in RPGs, but i am not always sure what role it’s supposed to fill. Getting stronger than enemies as you lvl up isn’t the only thing levelling does. It allows for gradual introduction of complexity (instead of dumping 10 spell levels you gradually feed them to the player giving him time to explore them couple at a time) and it allows for gradual definition of your character. I do wonder how game like pillars would play if numeric grow would be minimised - your accuracy, health, damage is determined via attributes and that’s it. You raise stats by equipment only, and with levels you get access to passives and skills but not much else. That way you could keep your enemies static. With more skills and passives, sure you would get much better, but mostly by use of said skills, which should be way more satisfying that doing way too good rolls in combat log. Use lvling to add tactical depth, rather than plain power. On top of that you can deal with flat numbers, rather than % making whole system more transparent. I think, i might like that.

No, I decided to argue for, what I believed at the time, to be the best and most balanced view and what everyone really wanted but was to shortsighted to see. I was quickly corrected and I realized that what I am really arguing for is a system, which will fit best my personal preferences and will borrow from systems I liked, while ignoring parts I don't really care about. Also why do we argue about this stuff, if original subject of the thread was "the later stages of PoE were to easy" and we went off the subject. My answer is quite simple, while probably not satisfying to you: beggar-bandit is being a challenging encounter to a hero, even though he killed dragons and demigods, because right now, at this moment, it will make for the more interesting encounter. <Also as a sidenote ideally that is not happening, because the game is structured in a way that you completed low lvl quest before getting access to dragon killing ones, or they are gone forever and you feel repercusion in the story for not facing the bandits etc, but if I have to choose between to evils, I will take a series of seperate but fully engaging short stories, over more consistant but often dull or frustrating experience> Story arc "you are more powerful, you kill stuff better" is an arc, but not terribly interesting one, and the story, which quest itself presents is more engaging to me. Peace out.

No, you are very right. That wasn't really a part Dude's quote was refering to. My bad on making it unclear. Below is a more specific version of my previous post. Also, not really an attempt to disagree, but acknowledgment that PoE does a great job with the subject, an everyone can approach the Gods in PoE with different attitude and draw different conclusions.

As far as I understood, they do not. It was always there, the engwithians just sucked souls from it to create and feed the gods. The Gods are nothing but artificial parasites. Just like in real life. https://youtu.be/pWdd6_ZxX8c

I don’t know what games you have played but there are some Games, especially Obsidian’s, with some really neat characters, storytelling, pacing and tension building. Way more engaging that “TROLL SMASH” followed after 20h of grind with “ME SMASH”. I don't know what you're talking about, I was talking about level-scaling vs static levels. So do I. IE and PoE aren’t sandbox playgrounds, but games where game master premade set of intertwined stories for players interact with and experience. Those individual narratives have their own arcs and tensions and downtimes all contributing to the bigger game arc and its themes. For me it’s more important for those narratives to be cohesive and for their stories to be supported by gameplay (for example: if a short narrative (quest) has a nemesis, or dangerous criminal he should act as such and pose certain challenge) than to have every troll or same faction bandit in a game have the same stats. How it is done I don’t really care. Whenever power creep which comes with lvling is minimised (after all, unlike BG, story of PoE wasn’t about getting stronger), guiding your experience through stories in an order that will make each experience fit your lvl, or scaling enemies to your lvl depending on how many narratives you completed before. Not all narratives have to be doable at any given time, but its more important for me to be engaged by every single one, both by writing and gameplay, than being able to take two bandits, dragons or trolls from two distant places in the world and story, and compel then and see that they have the same statistics. Of course, unless you want to introduce early on such character or faction as an unbeatable, building for confrontation later on. That’s all up to narrative being told.

There was a real neat interview with Eric Fenstermaker about PoE and there was an excerpt about themes and faith which I found super interesting - how much writiers perspective and origin of an idea differs from what I would expect. As it touches “faith” in pillars and where it came from I think it’s worth reposting. Full interview can be found here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10231 “We had two major themes we wanted to work with, both of which seemed natural and important to discuss for this particular story and setting. I'll suggest that people who think one of them is about faith might want to broaden their perspective a bit. Both themes are present in the player's story and at least one is present in each companion's story, though which theme it is varies. White March (taken as a whole) puts a spin on both, but tends to focus on one in particular. Part of the genesis of the Pillars story in particular was the observation that in most fantasy settings, the gods are taken for granted. You know they're up there on Olympus or in the heavens or wherever, and you have some idea of how your afterlife is going to look, and what steps you have to take to improve your standing in that regard. Characters in these worlds, on some level, aren't quite human if they don't have to wonder about these things. It's a romantic and appealing fantasy to have all of that figured out and to only need to worry about killing your enemies and pleasing your gods and boning other similarly carefree and attractive violet-eyed adventurers, and that's resulted in the prevalence of that kind of setting within the genre. But if you go that route you miss out on one of the best ways to test your characters and see what they are made out of, and you also miss out on a powerful source of relatability that just about every other genre has access to (and futuristic sci-fi often thrives on). This wasn't an idea that came about immediately, even when writing what would become he final treatment, but when it did, it led to the game story as you see it now.”

I don’t know what games you have played but there are some Games, especially Obsidian’s, with some really neat characters, storytelling, pacing and tension building. Way more engaging that “TROLL SMASH” followed after 20h of grind with “ME SMASH”.

@Tigranes Thanks a lot for detailed post. Its always interesting to clearly learn of other peoples' preferences and interest. I would say that in short what we want is a different experience. I want PoE to tell me a story and adjust its quests to fit the story. When I run into problem with end game lvl being to easy, is not "inconsistency" of the word, but that the gameplay is not supporting the story it is telling. I find it interesting that you bring example of Witcher3 as a game which you can't beat higher lvl enemies and Gothic as ones you can. Because in my experience it was completely opposite. I was able to defeat enemies on way higher lvls than I in Witcher 3, because it has a skill based combat, and you can avoid getting hit by pure skill only. At the time lvling in Witcher3 was trash and together with equipment the worst part of the game. Also it got way to easy in later half due to XP bloat. It would be much better game if there was no lvling. Gothic on the other hand... for all the love I have for the game, its worldbuiling and yes, using static lvl to create a dread and bring statisfaction of killing enemies which murdered you 20hours ago... combat sucks so very very mucho. Yes, you can beat enemies on higher lvls, but usually by abusing bad pathfinding and poor AI. Which personally I found to be very unsatisfying. It felt like defeating a boss, who got glitched out. Man, I need to finally get myself a pad and play DarkSouls one of these days. From what I saw of it, I want Gothic style game with THAT combat. But yeah, we won't reach consensus on how lvling should be done as RPG as we value other things. From Deadfire I would probably want a mix design - one which would allow me to explore the world and have fairly good gameplay experience, while keeping some tough areas thougher to fit the lore and give something to work towards.

Yeah, but there are plenty protection, debuff spells to use, which don't benefit from resolve. In case of summoned weapon mage Investing in resolve is benefitial, but so is dexterity, perception, intelligence and constitution (the least in my opinion) and that is the goal no? Similarly, every specialized build will have a dump stat. I don't think the goal is to make every stat important to every build, but to have every attribute interact with the class in a way that makes it possible to build around said attribute with said class. The problem with resolve is that spellcaster just didn't benefit from it at all. Whatever you wanted to do, it was a dump stat. Still, my worry stays - do classes have enough variety in them to support both str and res builds.

I think this is all entirely subjective, as to me the new system is more simplified - not less. While it's true that weapon-summoning casters are going to need both Strength and Resolve, this is going to be a minority of character builds. This is because (a) it's already a little bit of a niche concept to begin with and (b) it's now discouraged by the mechanics as inherently having to split between Strength and Resolve makes you more divided and likely less damaging strong than a pure caster or a pure melee/ranged weapon guy - unless they make summoned weapons crazy strong, but that's also not a good approach to game balance. Therefore you now have a system where nuanced builds slip between the cracks for a lot of people, as they lack power, and 95% of builds will be dumping one stat or the other. This has now removed a complication from character building, and by providing a dump stat weirdly it allows for you to have a greater effective pool of character points to easily play with in character creation - which has far reaching implications for overall game balance when you think of it. I think objectively they've made a lot more problems for themselves than they realise with making the change, though I guess that's maybe why they're beta testing it so they can get a feel for how these changes play out. Do you need resolve for weapon oriented wizard build? Deflection helps, spell damage isn't needed (I might completely miss how mechanics work with this update but summoned weapons aren't affected by resolve, right?). Staff is long range weapon allowing to attack from behind tanks, there is also a ranged AOE summoned weapon. which is really effective. I do feel some balancing need to happen (too long summon time for weapons) but it works. I do believe str/res make characer building more convoluted (figuring what your class will benefit from most when doing damage is more difficult to figure out now) but it does bring new possible depth to tactical combat. That statement is made assuming that what we have is first concept test rather than a working system. If Obsidian would commit to stick to str/res some serious rebalancing is required. I find idea of str/res especially apprealing with presence of multiclassing. My worry regarding str/res is not if its worse and better, but if current ability and class design can handle that change. Are classes benefit enough from both str and res to favour those abilities. Does str wizard have enough spells to make him interesting (combined with int based spells I would say yes). This system plays more into how I plan my party. If I build my wizard around hard hitting spells I probably won't plan on using him as a weapon DPS - its just not his role in the party. I am confused by people who are upset that their battlemage won't be hitting hard in melee AND hitting hard with fireballs, because it is not how I would design my character - those are two seperate roles which overlap rather than compliment each other. But that's just a way I think.

As may it be, it caused confusion. I saw multiple people claim that might represents “strength of your soul”. I am not sure where that came from - I assume pre release explanation. Those are sort of issues which come up when you try to appease everyone - everyone will find some issue with the system because it is not fully committed to anything. I like might as a combat system and over all, I agree but because I am a pain in the butt I will have to try and make a correction: might was more elegant and clear. But it wasn’t more customisable. Strength/resolve gives character building more nuance by separating physical and ability power. It allows you to create character which is strong in both AND differentiate each other (he is spiritually strong priest and can heal a bunch but not strong physically in combat). As such I would say strength/resolve has more nuance and gives more character possibilities. Whenever the advantage it gives is worth the change to strait forward system of PoE1 - I am not so sure.

Ah, so now we know where “double VO” budget will go - Mercer tax

I have been interrogating my cat for 2 days now, trying to make her rat out who scratched her nose. Still nothing. I am doing good cop/good cop routine.

The only real problem with “might” i had in PoE was that game itself was inconsistent in what it is. All of the above is fine. I am fine with might representing mystical capability of the character whenever it is using melee, ranged, guns or spells. I am fine with potent magic requiering physical strength of a wielder. But if the second is true, present mages as such, rather than traditional D&D bookworm, only sourounded by books, stuck in basements, without much light or excercise. It’s not that “might” wasn’t a stat I was expecting to see (I found character creation straightforward and satisfying). I just count figure out what the stat represents and it seemed like game wasn’t convinced either. There was inconsistency between stat discription, how the stat was utilised incconversation and how high “might” NPCs were presented.

No, I fully believe in 1) and don't consider it extreme, and wish it were simply common sense. Ok, good to know. But wouldn’t that require a pretty much linear game? In case of Deadfire, yeah we opened up the world but if you go in any other direction than we plan for you to, you die because only this location is at your level? On the other hand, if you open a lot of content for lvl 1-5, than once you ge past that point those areas won’t be fun. In addition if the world is very open you risk spending a lot of time going to different places, getting killed and looking for a place you actually can complete. For a story driven RPG seems like a big misstep. I get that some creatures need to be powerful, and some need to be weak. But how about human robbers, bounty hunter etc. Does their relative “lvl” to each other really matter, if their only role is to create an obstacle for you alone?

I think you forget PoE is based on popular old RPGs, based on the popularity or reputation of Obsidian. I can't think of any positives that outweigh the confusion and frustration new players experience when confronted with attributes. They are only part of the game because of popular tradition and consequently popular demand of old school hardcore fans. I think the overall idea has merit, even if wording is slippery slope. Gromnir made a compelling post regarding devs following players wishes. I will let his own writing speak for itself: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95407-deadfire-failing/?p=1968377 Of course, ignoring freedback of your audience is arrogant and silly, but it is devs responsibility to make a game and they should follow their guts and personal vision. I like Del Toro’s quote that he hopes each of his movies will find their own audience. Problem is it doesn’t really work like that with crowdfunding. You already have an audience who funded the project. You should care to make a game that will satisfy people who backed it. Few people will be open minded enough to appreciate released product, if it won’t fit into what they have invisioned when they backed the project. Or it will deliver something else they didn’t know they wanted.

Are they real though? If they have been created by people should they have that influence over people? Is,their positive influence enough to justify cruelties done to gain their favour (roderick). The finale leaves a lot of doubt and raises questions and I can’t wait to see how Obsidian will delve deeper into the subject in Deadfire.

I am pretty sure Mercer is back. He recorded voice for e3 demo. I am not sure how much those gaming voiceactors can barter. Sure he did Overwatch, but does it make him a star? Will putting "one of the companions voiced by McCree" bring an Overwatch in? If that's the case, hiring him should be borth extra expenses. It is more likely he can negotiate better pay as he did well in PoE1. Dunno. As far as we know he is in. He did trailer, he did demo, would be weird for him to not do actual game.

Are we really getting stuck on single words? Yeah, generic doesn’t have to be negative, but it can be used to bring attention to unoriginal or uninteresting of a nature of an item which by design should be unique like “a generic action film”. My stance still is the same - choosing from one-of-a-kind handcrafted weapons is more interesting than choosing from weapons which are easily recreatable and interchangeable with each other.