Wormerine

http://investor.ea.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=712515-17-95&CIK=712515 Quote regarding removal of micro transactions in BF2: “This change is not expected to have a material impact on EA’s fiscal year 2018 financial guidance.” They don’t need those to keep making games. Overwatch doesn’t NEED lootboxes in order to not shut down. But corporations do what corporations do. Their job is to make as much money with as little expense as they can. Make shareholders happy. It seems as overwatch proved, lootboxes can bring a lot of money with very little expense. That’s all that matter. EA just got a bit to greedy this time around it seems. StarWars game won’t sell enough to make money and then some? Please.

EA adopted free to play market strategy, which is designed to milk vulnerable individuals. I don’t think anyone will claim that lootboxes or pay2win micro transactions offer fair deals. We have seen reports of minors spending thousands of $ on free2play games with their parents cards. And while I might first criticise parents for giving such unrestricted access to their bank accounts, it doesn’t make dev intentions any less predatory. Battlefront is a game based on a franchise owned by Disney (company for kids), which is a space fairytale (aimed primarily at children) and no doubt many kids will want battlefront for Christmas. It is by no means a stretch that the plan was to get parents to buy game for kids and then milk as much as they can out of them. As it happens, StarWars has been for a while, and unlike something like Smurf Village has tons of reviewers and adults interested in it and raised their concerns rather loudly. I am not sure if anything will come out of it, and I especially doubt EA will suffer due to that. But hopefully it will give big publishers a pause and they will backpedal a bit. If it turns out micro transactions like lootboxes can indeed be harmful and addictive to young people and have a negative impact on them that there should be a legislation to prevent that from happening.

Ah, that is another topic. Changes to number and statistic aren’t all at exciting in an electronic game, where those calculations are happening “under the hood”. Adding +2 after doing physical roll of dice doesn’t have the same impact when those things are done for you. I think Deadfire made a step in a right direction by unifying a lot of statistics between classes and trying to differentiate them through active abilities. It reminds me of Tim Cain’s talk that was posted a while ago on these forums. An example he gave was shotgun: rather than increasing base damage of a shotgun you can allow player to upgrade recoil control. That way shotgun doesn’t magically do more damage, but you still increase DPS fulfilling same design role, while feeling more natural to the player.

I still want my silly walk.

Does it get a pass? Never used food pre-buff unless I felt I had to. It was a boring, fiddly process which didn’t bring any depth nor interesting choices to the game. And that’s why I am happy to see in repurposed for an anti-too-much-resting-system for Deadfire.

Thank for insightful and thoughtful response. I believe you make good points: RPGs can (and potentially should) work as a simulation. As a player you are given a set of tools, you decide which “tools” are your characters good at using and you use those “tools” to solve problems in a way which feels appropriate. As usual Fallout or Arcanum springs to mind with that design. Divinity and Wasteland 2 to some extend from more recent titles. I like to call those “sanbox RPGs”. You create character, you enter an area/world and you interact with it with available skills. You need to rescue a prisoner? All you have is a map & objective as long as prisoner leaves map with you we are good. Pick locks, pass speech check, kill everyone, pickpocket key, bribe anything you want. Cool. It’s not Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate is a compilation of heavily directed quests with clear “conversation, combat, exploration” parts. Your class doesn’t influence story nor world. Your skills rarely are useful outside combat (with few exceptions I will get into that) - an example I can think of is in BG2 during troll siege of a keep you can mindcontrol an NPC in order to avoiding killing him. Baldur’s Gate did have spells handy outside of combat and I did really liked those - unlocking doors, finding traps, wish. Those were really really good and I those non combat abilities would be welcome addition to PoE. It’s poorer for lack of those. But Baldur’s Gate wasn’t a sandbox in which you created your stories. You were a participant in a story told to you by GM. You enter the room and there is combat. After combat your search for clues. You find a blooded green piece of cloth. You confront NPC dressed in green. He is an archmage. You can accept a bribe or report him to authorities. You threaten to report him and tough combat ensues ending the quest. That was the innovation of BG and its influence (to some extend detrimental) to RPGs. Better paced stories, giving your character set motivation with film worthy villains and characters. Reputation system was basic (and heavily unbalanced toward good players - try playing selfish or neutral character and you won’t find quests to complete), ability to interact with the world minimal. And with this design big power gap is an issue. You want to confront a character against some easier mobs and than a big baddy. A dragon or a powerful NPC you have been chasing for a long time. You want it to be a big epic battle which will work as a grand finale of a quest. How do you make that happen if player can just spend couple minutes before combat and make himself invincible? Ironicus fight anyone? So you see, I see Pillars as a true spiritual successor of BG. They expand strengths of the game - it’s more interactive and reactive. Your character stats and abilities have influence in conversations and scripted interactions while in BG they would be relevant in combat only. You have more choices when it comes to quests and game supports a wider range of characters to role play as (as opposed to Bioware good, evil guy). With pickpocketing and better stealth we might even see a bit of fluid quest design in PoE2. But it’s not a “sandbox RPG” just like BG never was one. Which is ok. We can have both.

You might want to head to beta part of the forum. Most of the discussion about beta is happening right there.

Absolutely. The point I was trying to make is that games are not simulations of reality. Yes, there a simulators, but even those aren’t simulations. I like flight sims, car sims, I enjoy sims like Kerbal Space Program or Oxygen not Included but they are all games not simulators. Statement that making fantasy game combat “realistic” is objectively better is ignoring what games are. Games don’t work because they are realistic. They work because of mechanics, which create interesting problems to interact with/solve. And, again, Baldur’s Gate was never a simulator. Why are spells limited per rest? How do you “forget them”? It’s a game mechanic from PnP RPG. One that worked fine in tabletop and didn’t translate all that well to cRPG. Never said BG2 sucked (again one of my fav titles of all time), but it had design flaws. I also refuse to acknowledge prebuffing as some kind of higher, more intelligent, sophisticated game design. I also accept and understand that it is what some people want, though I am convinced reasons they want it is not what OP claims it is. I did get annoyed by constant suggestions by OP that changes made to game system are due to lazyless, financial constrained and lack of creativity while never responding to arguments against such system.

Liked NWN2 a lot, system itself not so much.

Online? Hahaha Yeah I don’t think they will start working on netcode to privde testing ground for singleplayer game were content is PvE. An arena (doesn’t need to be pretty. Any of open encounter maps would do) would be nice. Create a party, choose from couple premade opponents to face. I want to experiment with different builds and compositions but doing it through quest playthrough take a bit more time than needed.

An expanded granadeer set of perks? For now let’s not panic and see how the next update will look like. I have a feeling that things won’t change all that much. It doesn’t seem like one will be able to pick too many of those warrior passives and skills which really make warriors tick right now (stances) are theirs only. I am more worried for rangers. They just don’t seem really fun right now. Pretty much limited to ranged, either long ranged active skills, or dull passives. Right now I can see them as a multiclass potential only.

Of course, Baldur’s Gate was innovative at the time. It translated nerdy turn based RPG into slick real time adventure, which anyone could enjoy. Baldur’s Gate2 set a new standard of quest design and RPG structure, which lead to a new way of making RPG and in time decline of RPG (games which were good but not really RPGs - Mass Effect, Jade Empire). Because BG was innovative in its accessibility and storytelling, not simulation. Games like fallout were much more sim RPGs. BG pretty much ignored who your PC is and rolled with prewritten story with few real choices to make. Your ability to interact with world was much more limited than in previous RPGs - but pacing and quality of storytelling went up. Now you come from assumption that game should strive to be a simulation. It’s a notion I understand to some degree as it was what I believed a long time ago. But that’s not true. Designers should figure out what is fun and what is not and adjust, limit and cut what isn’t fun. When interviewer asked Hitch****, why characters in his movies don’t go to police when something bad happens his answer was “because it would be boring”. I also like another of his quote: “Drama is life with dull bits cut out”. You seem annoyed with us pointing out prebuffing and need to balance with that in mind. Here is why: in order for combat to not be dull it needs to pose challenge. If prebuffing is allowed to present a challange you need to balance for prebuffed party. If you don’t, it is to easy to make every engagement trivial making drama of the game dull. While Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of my favourite titles of all times it’s not flawless. It is one of very big design flaws clashing with gameplay and storytelling. PoE is expanding what made BG great (storytelling, quest design, character creation and development, visual presentation) and polishing its flaws. It’s iterative rather than innovative as it’s building upon what IE games did. Keeping way of how spells worked without an attempt to fix their problems wouldn’t be innovative. It would be a bland repetition and without nostalgia goggles it’s flaws might not go unforgiven. If you want a complex and systematically consistent fantasy simulator... well, BG was never that. I would welcome a more consistent system, which nicely interact with all aspects of gameplay. But for that we would need to throw out IE roots and start and innovative RPG from scratch. Now hoping that the misterious Obsidian project is just that.

Like world map or location map? In both cases no, though

True, engagement cant be punishing. However, at least in my playthrough I have couple different abilities that would help in breaking engagement coming from my fighter, monk and rogue. Rogue especially was great in moving around battlefied and disabling key enemies.

YES! A solid victory, my noble walking supporters. Now we move on to Phase 2! We won't rest until characters not only move as slowly as possible, but also move a negative amount of distance every time they move! *Scary agenda*. Turns out the anti-walkers were right to fear us! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Moonwalk for the win

I get it from the standpoint of a business. It reduces the hours for development time. It is much easier to just disable something that has many variables. I don't get it from the stand point of trying to make a truly innovative experience which I really admired about BG. ...... “It’s not the same as a game I played 20 years ago” so it’s not “Innovative”. :-D It’s nothing to do with complexity of design, or creativity or being innovative. It’s just some people don’t like going through checklists before every fight. But we have been through all of that before.

Not a big concern for me personally, as I will stick to classes that make sense of character anyway. However, there is no denying that having freedom to multiclass companions as you wish brings more posibilities and replayibility. It would be nice if they find time to figure out technical issues before launch and bring the original system back. As it is not, I am not terribly disappointed. As to the original poster - lets test beta hard so there won't have really bad builds. I don't believe there will be many special subclasses for companions. Pallegina is one, depending on PoE1 ending but I expect most of them to have generic subclasses. I am also confident that with this limited system Obsidian will put some thoughts into how to multiclass companions so players have a decent choice, not to much overlap in roles and they all are playable.

At this point I would rather use Wasteland 2, Tides of Numenera, Divinity Original Sin2 as examples rather than Activision Blizzard title. I can think of plenty of game that look and feel better than Obsidians games - shiny comes with big budget, big budget comes with shareholders being your main customers.

Sure, as attributes don't get higher will lvls it would make much more sense to have those balanced around situations rather than game content... if it ever was. I can't remember the situation you mentioned.

There was some confucion which was explained during the most recent Q&A. Here's what Josh said: "What we are currently supporting—and this might change—is that when you get a character in your party you will have the option of taking them as — it depends on the character. There will be three options depending on the character. If you get Edér it'll say: "Hey, do you want to be a Fighter, a Rogue or a Swashbuckler?" There are other characters, like Aloth, where it will be a Wizard or a Wizard mixed with another class(that we'll define), or a third option which is a Wizard mixed with yet another class. That's what we're currently supporting. Depending on how testing of that goes we may open that up to support more than that. It just turned out to be more technically complicated, in terms of UI and progression, than we had expected. But, yeah, the currently plan is that every companion that you get will have those three options and you specify it right there, and then they advance as that class or combination of classes."

But… But… But… How does it end? ☺ Haha there's the episode in youtube but I could't watch it. Too stupid and it was not for childern after all! NOW you made me curious

Can't say I really care. My character killed Adra Dragon, because that is what my character would do. If they transfer Scale-Breaker into sequel that means: 1) fights with Dragon's might be balanced around having Scale-Breaker in order to be balanced - therefore it sucks if you don't have it. Maybe you can get this skill in Deadfire in addition to it being transfered from PoE1 2) Scale-Breaker skill is not considered when designing Dragon encounters, so when you have it transfered from PoE1 you have a much easier time. In which case I won't use it (probably) Not a problem since its optional. I would be more interested in some cool story reaction in Deadfire from mentioned events.

Josh added an example of Aloth. He will be pure Wizard or Wizard/class no1 or Wizard/class no.2. All of them will have 3 choices. So Pallegina will probably the same: pure Palladin, Palladin + class no. 1, Palladin + class no. 2. What those subclasses will be is anyones guess. I get an impression it is all still in the air. Josh said that this is what they have in mind right now, but it is a subject to a possible change. We will see.

My experience with engagement on fighter (using default fighter mercenery) is that when you use defencive modal people seem to stick to him like flies to honey. Its almost to good. Backline went on almost unharrased (played on veteran.) The ability to do Scorpion style pull was a hit&miss. Everyonce in a while someone would brake off and attack mage but with two additional melee DPS (monk and rogue) they didn't pose much problem. I did find it important to lead with my fighter and position him as a roadbloack between enemies and party. Once enemies scattered around and engaged other party member attrackting their attention was rather tricky. I also left enemies engaged with fighter and focused on other enemies one or two at a time. If an enemy gets hit hard by one of your companions he might consider leaving fighter alone and going after attacker.

Does Obsidian use motion capture, or is it all handmade? I remember them showing off a room which used to be motion capture room for Alpha Protocol, but I don’t remember if they still have the stuff.