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Blucher

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Posts posted by Blucher

  1. What You are describing here is, for many, a completely immersion-breaking experience. You are asking players to make a metagame choice to deliberately hinder their characters through suboptimal play. If you mentally separate the player from the character in such a way that the player's deliberate choice doesn't have an in-game parallel to character choice, then I imagine you have no problems. However, a lot of players, including me, have a problem doing this. I could play a tank character without the strategic sense to use the very powerful doorway strategy, but I'd need to explain it to myself in-game somehow - perhaps he's too narcissistic to really care about the rest of the party, perhaps he secretly hopes to betray them, perhaps he's a bit mad, most likely he's just plain old daft. While this can work for me, I wouldn't want to play that way every time.

     

    There is also immersion in terms of enemies. Any group which is so easily thwarted by such tactics simply doesn't seem smart. If I'm fighting animals or (most) wilders, no problem with immersion there, but when seasoned sellswords are befuddled by it, I see it as the game making mockery of their intelligence.

     

    Basically, you're telling players they are responsible for imagining how actions play out in Eora. I beg to differ; it is the game's responsibility to show us, in a manner which delivers on role-playing expectations. We as players are audience here, not storytellers... at least not primarily.

     

    I think I see what you are getting at, and it's a valid point.  I don't approach cRPGs that way though, so it's kind of an alien concept to me.

     

    I love RPGs and have played a ton: sitting around a table, rolling dice, pushing miniatures, as well as really getting "into" character, trying to eliminate meta-knowledge, all that.  But cRPGs I view as mostly pushing miniatures, within a meagre framework of "story".  Now if I really get drawn into the story, and/or really find myself growing attached to NPCs (which I have)... that's great!  But normally I want a cRPG (with an emphasis on the lowercase c) to be a kick-but combat simulator with (hopefully deep) elements  from "real" RPG systems.

     

    As such I have no problem modulating my behavior within a game, depending upon what gives me the most satisfaction.

  2.  

    A Priest, a Chanter and a Paladin in your group will massively increase your effectiveness. Even just one will provide substantial group bonuses. This feels very different from IE-era stuff to me. (That's a good thing.) Buffs may be far shorter and you can't pre-buff, but those buffs are REALLY useful during actual combat.

    Say what?

     

    Are we playing different games? We must be. There is not a SINGLE buff in PoE that bestows anything more than a minor adjustment to a party's stats. This is Josh Sawyer's baby, lest we've forgotten. Sawyer is a disciple of the power-via-10,000-baby-steps school of game design. There are no hard counters in this game. None. Instead, the system in place is designed to allow for infinite bonus stacking. And good players can eventually stack enough minor bonuses upon themselves to make a noticeable difference. I see the appeal of such a design, but I see it for what it IS. It's the spreadsheet nerd's Ideal. But Lets not pretend that any individual buff is REALLY powerful in capital letters.

     

    ...Or that it even comes close to the IE games in terms of being game changing.

     

    -In BG1, your 5th level Mage can cast Haste, which doubles the number of attacks everyone in your party (including your summons) get per round....for an extended period of time. While in PoE, your 5th level Wizard's Haste spell (deleterious alacrity of motion) lasts about 15 seconds and simply reduces the action recovery time by a couple of seconds.... OF ONE PERSON.

     

    -In the IE games, your Cleric can cast Chaotic Commands, which makes its recipient IMMUNE to all mind effecting spells, like domination, fear charm, confusion, stun, paralysis etc...for minutes at a time. While in PoE your priest can.... not? There is no all-encompassing mind protection spell in PoE. Instead, once your priest reaches about 11th friggin level, he gets access to a spell that reduces the duration of charm and domination effects by a couple of seconds and gives you a +something bonus to save against such spells.

     

    -In the IE games, Your mage can cast a single spell that makes him IMMUNE to the first 5 physical attacks that hit him. In PoE your Wizard can, at best, cast a spell that gives him a deflection bonus that expires the first time someone scores a hit on him.

     

    -in the IE games, you've got Mass invisibility. A spell that makes everyone in your party totally invisible. Totally undetectable. In PoE, there's no such buff. Not even partially.

     

    -In the IE games, there's a 1st level cleric spell that makes your entire party (and your summons) IMMUNE to fear, for an extended period of time. In PoE, I think there might 5th level priest spell that bestows a moderate bonus to your saves against fear... to everyone in a 2 meter radius.

     

     

    I really like this post.  PoE is a really nice game so far, but THAT (above) is a cause of why it's also kind of boring (to me, at least).

  3.  

    well, if you dont like chokepoints , dont use it...

     

    Again, and for the millionth time - "don't use it" is not an appropriate response to the existence of an overpowered/dominant strategy. If chess had a rule where I could trade my pawns for queens on the first turn, I could surely decide to "not use it" to make the game more fun... but the game would still be poorly designed.

     

     

    Sure it is.  This is a single player game.  If someone doesn't like doing something, they shouldn't do it.

     

    In the IE games, if I had a full party, I would rarely, if ever, pre-buff, kite, attack outside of LOS, or any other powerful (OP?) tactic.  I would just barrel right on into the fight and make the best of things.  (Usually with as little active input as possible, and I really enjoyed making my own scripts for those games.)

     

    But... if I was playing a solo-ironman game, you bet I did everything I could to give myself an advantage (and I needed it).

     

    The exploits in the IE games allowed *me* the ability to really enjoy the game in a variety of ways, from ridiculously easy to ridiculously difficult, and everywhere inbetween.

     

    In single-player games, players have to accept some small modicum of responsibility for their own behavior in and enjoyment of a game.

  4. I've been having just as much fun with PoE as with the Dragon Age games (actually more), despite the lack of 3D. I really wish publishers would let games be in 2D when there was no gameplay exigency for their use. This would allow more experimentation and innovation as the cost of development would be so much lower.

     

    This is my thought.  If the game kind of "needs" it, like a shooter or flight sim or something, then sure, 3D is the way to go.  But for a tactical, party-based game like most RPGs?  Give me (a nice looking) 2D, any day.  PoE nailed the graphics, imo.

     

    I should mention that I don't care for 1st person games in general (Elder Scroll game included), and think Dwarf Fortress (with a decent tileset) has wonderful graphics...

    • Like 1
  5. Some people seek external rewards over internal rewards (and the other way around too ofc).  I think those that want exploits removed (rest spamming, forex) want the external reward of having accomplishments in a game to be recognized by the community (on some level).  The presence of exploits do (sort of) remove a lot of the "bragging rights" in beating a game.

     

    I'm more internally motivated, so I have no problem "gimping" myself if it means making a game more fun (self imposed ironman mode, or playing solo, or w/e) and couldn't care less if someone else somewhere was abusing the crap out of a broken mechanic in a game.  But I can see how it can bother other people.

    • Like 1
  6. We both gave up because we don't find the game very fun to play.

     

    I enjoy the Infinity Engine games (other than PST) for the tactical rts-style combat. Combat in Pillars of Eternity isn't very tactical at all, it's like 50% positioning, 45% strategy, 5% tactics and after level 4 you can rinse and repeat the same strategy almost every single encounter without having to even react to enemy actions, because there's nothing that forces you to change what you're doing.

     

    Even with Engagement and movement recovery slow fixed, it's still not that fun. Encounter design is very copy paste, itemization/loot is poor to abysmal and while the environment art is for the most part pretty great, areas aren't really that fun to explore.

     

    Poor combat is however, par for the course for an Obsidian game and I would have continued playing had I enjoyed the writing/story but quite frankly I didn't really, I liked the prologue reveal but I found that the pacing and player motivation to be very disjointed, Act 2 was a huuuge letdown and I got sick of all the forced lore dumps and dry as a desert writing style. The companions were also quite disappointing for the most part - I liked Chris Avellone's characters though, they at least actually had a personality. Can't even think of a memorable secondary character either.

     

    I did like some of the story stuff, like the soul detective type stuff - that was pretty cool, although I think more could have been done with it.

     

    I stopped during Act 3, and from what I've read the game goes downhill from here, and the antagonist isn't very compelling and the final battle isn't even as good as the BG1 battle vs Sarevok sad.png

     

    I like a few things about the game - the art is good, some of the new ui features are nice and the character system has lots of custimization/choice.

     

    Might give it another go somewhere down the line, but yeah, I'd rather just leave it and accept that the game was not made for people like me, but more for people who may have liked the Infinity Engine games, but disliked the combat.

     

    (I'll reference BG2, since I consider that to be the very best of the IE games.)

     

    BG2 combat was FUN.  Yes, it was over-the-top, crazy, horribly broken, abusable, etc. etc.  But still fun.

     

    I was a long-time vet of AD&D(2) and I still got my arse handed to me in BG2 at first.  The game was challenging.  Then I learned, and I could face-roll my way through just about everything with a decent party and some meta-knowledge.  So I made less than optimal parties, and that was somewhat difficult for awhile.  Then I moved on to soloing the game, same thing.  Then Solo-no-reload (or Solo Ironman), and that is *still* crazy difficult (and fun) to this very day!  And that isn't counting all of the mods you could throw into the mix.

     

    The combat in PoE just seems to be missing something to me.  The spells, abilities, and items, are all underwhelming.  It's a well crafted system (it's not easy making an RPG system from scratch), but maybe it's a little too well crafted.  Almost too balanced and bland?

    • Like 5
  7. ...I understand why the resting restrictions are in the game, I'm just saying that what it does is force you to go back to town a lot and that whole process is very repeatitive and boring...

     

    I originally thought the idea (of camping supplies) was decent (not great, but decent), but with more time in I have to agree with you.

     

    Fundamentally, there is no difference between resting as much as I want vs. resting only in town (or with camping supplies) other than a whole lot of wasted (real) time.

     

    It is somewhat annoying.

  8. Bottomline for me is that it was a joke.  If a joke offends you, thats on you.  Go away and consume some content that does not offend you.

     

    Obsidian did the wrong thing by editing the joke.  

     

    I look at it like this: Someone was offended by the joke.  Obsidian checked it out and agreed that the joke was in poor taste (to some extent at least), enough to ask the backer to change the wording.  The backer agreed, and Obsidian implemented the changes.

     

    There is *nothing* wrong with that!

     

    Now, I personally did not find the joke offensive at all.  It never even occurred to me that the joke could be offensive.  But then again, I'm not a trans-sexual person.  But thinking about it, I can however see how such a person would find the joke to be in poor taste.  I can see it.  Obsidian must have seen it too.

    • Like 4
  9. Everyone is (or has been) an armchair RPG Game Designer (myself included).

     

    I like being able to rest when things go bad, assuming I can get out of a situation, w/o going all the way back to Town (or another safe place -- or worse, re-load).  I also really like seeing how far I can go without having to rest as well.

     

    In a real tabletop RPG, the DM would let the party rest when the overall game session's pacing required it, but would also "roll up" some wandering monsters if he felt like the players were taking advantage.

     

    In a single-player CRPG, I have to take some responsibility for my own game experience.  I rest when I can't be arsed to do something more realistic, otherwise I do not.  I like it that way.

     

    I also know that some people really, really hate limiting themselves at all.  The camping supplies mechanics seems like a decent compromise so far.

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