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ThacoBell
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Posts posted by ThacoBell
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Hahaha - your sarcasm detector is broken.
a) Poe's Law applies.
b) Satire is not immunity from criticism.
c) Not noticing satire is not immunity from not being made no fun of.
When its in the form absolutely toneless text, it should be.
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Sarcasm is better off left out of text only discussions. At best its trolling, at worst its legitimate personal attack.
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Monks: But I want to use all the cool weapons!
Chanters: Like D&D Bards, but worse.-
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The relationship system was Obsidian shooting themselves in the foot. Its not really all that interesting, and its complexity is preventing them from making more/better companions. Sidekincks were really a waste of time.
I think "shooting themselves in the foot" is a little strong.
First, Pillars 1 had too many companions. Understandably, they "had" to cover all the classes, so 11 companions makes sense from a certain perspective, but that justification doesn't hold up in Deadfire due to multiclassing.
Second, "interesting" is completely subjective. Yes, the Pillars 1 crew had some witty banters, but I do think there's more depth to it in Deadfire. Maybe that's not your thing and that's ok, but I don't think it was a mistake or a failure.
Third, as someone who has ditched Xoti for a hireling, I can 100% confirm that sidekicks have value. They may not be as vocal as companions, but they aren't mute. They don't come out of the box 1 level behind, never to catch up. They don't share assets with ship crew members.
Where I do agree with you is that the deeper companinon relationship system isn't finished baking yet. It needs more work. And they defintely need to go back to their "no romance unless it can be done well" policy.
Exceot that the companions AREN'T deeper or more interesting than in PoE1. All the relationship thing has done is make me read, "Aloth raises an eyebrow." About 5,000 times. This adds NOTHING to his character.
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The relationship system was Obsidian shooting themselves in the foot. Its not really all that interesting, and its complexity is preventing them from making more/better companions. Sidekincks were really a waste of time.
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Oh okay, screw non-twitter users I guess.
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I refuse to buy any game on steam. 90% of my purchases are on GoG.
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The 2.0.1.0044 patch is still not available for Linux on GOG. There is a new full installer (20.9 GB) for this version, but the updates / patches are still limited to version 2.0.0.0030 at the most.
Could this be fixed, please?
I don't think its universal. I use GOG Galaxy and I've had the patch for quite some time now. You might want to check in with GOG support.
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I feel bad for the backers that didn't get what they were hoping for or expected. Getting burnt on this kind of stuff really sucks. :/
But I don't get why people treat any of this like a guaranteed product. Especially when so many things can change during production. Things like Kickstarter and Patreon are to help fund something getting made in the first place, not to purchase some item or items. When one donates/pledges money to these things, you should know going in that that money is gone (and that you're okay with that) and that the project may or may not turn out how you want.
To be fair, I think the wording on a lot of Kickstarters word it like a promise or a guarantee, but I don't think it's realistic expectations.
But the fact that they ARE worded that way means that they should be delivered as stated. Anything else could easily be considered fraudulent. Besides, how many people do you think would donate hundreds of dollars so that they MIGHT get something?
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I didn't say anything about "fighting" druids. I said druids are BETTER at killing wizards than wizards are, so I rarely use wizards and I always have at least one druids. Did you play the game modded? (SCS or Spell Revisions perhaps?) Because I've never seen Insect Plague be reflected. Also, when did I mention items? You might to actually try and debate with claims I actually made, rather make ones up wholesale.
Insect Plague type spells should not be subject to reflection. In terms of mechanics, they are like fireball - an aoe that won't center on a single target even if you actually click on it.
You fight wizards with wizards if you want a badass duel with counters after counters, with you and the enemy taking turn countering each other round after round. For me this is a source of great joy in BG2 combat. The fun is not in "to kill enemies", but in the HOW. There was one time I did a 2v2 duel with Edwin and Aerie against 2 liches. Now THAT was some good fun. Or, I could've just backstabbed them both the moment they spawned, instantly killing them. But that would be lame as hell. Shame most players these days don't bother with the whole "style" thing.
They aren't subject to reflection. The player either misremembered or used a modded set up.
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What you wrote was so hard to read and get through for multiple reasons...but let me just say this-
Its actually not difficult at all. Its not uncommon for me to avoid taking a wizard altogether. Why? DRUIDS. I have never seen a wizard able to defend against Insect Plague. No save, splits to multiple enemies, no protections block it, shuts down spellcasting altogether. MUCH easier than any wizard duel. Alternatively, an Inquisiter Paladin, or Wizard Slayer fighter, or Bard (That high level dispel magic). Hilariously wizards/sorcerors are only like, the 5th best class to beat another wizard.
Uh right. You actually played Eternity at some point? You realize it is perfectly viable to beat it with no wizard at all? Good luck beating BG2 on any real difficulty level without a wizard. But Eternity, way more wizard focused. Yeah.
PoE is more wizard centric than any IE game ever was.But the biggest strike against BG2 for me is that it is a wizard-centric game
Developer(s) found one mechanic to rule them all (similar to cooldowns in other modern RPGs) that is good enough at applying spell effects, and used it to apply all other effects in the game, by using same resource mechanic for everyone too.
That level of uniformity is not terrible for pnp games where you need to play fast and all you can do is roll dice, but in a computer game that means that yes, classes mechanically behave the same.
In no way whatsoever, do you face so many druids in BG2 that excluding a wizard in your party is an optimized or reasonable decision. It's just being a contrarian, esp when you bring up Wizard Slayers, easily considered the worst class in the game. Wizards DO in fact have counters to Insect Plague sound as reflection. Next you're going to tell us Staff of the Magi or Staff of the Ram are overrated.
I didn't say anything about "fighting" druids. I said druids are BETTER at killing wizards than wizards are, so I rarely use wizards and I always have at least one druids. Did you play the game modded? (SCS or Spell Revisions perhaps?) Because I've never seen Insect Plague be reflected. Also, when did I mention items? You might to actually try and debate with claims I actually made, rather make ones up wholesale.
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But the biggest strike against BG2 for me is that it is a wizard-centric game
PoE is more wizard centric than any IE game ever was.
Developer(s) found one mechanic to rule them all (similar to cooldowns in other modern RPGs) that is good enough at applying spell effects, and used it to apply all other effects in the game, by using same resource mechanic for everyone too.
That level of uniformity is not terrible for pnp games where you need to play fast and all you can do is roll dice, but in a computer game that means that yes, classes mechanically behave the same.
Uh right. You actually played Eternity at some point? You realize it is perfectly viable to beat it with no wizard at all? Good luck beating BG2 on any real difficulty level without a wizard. But Eternity, way more wizard focused. Yeah.
Its actually not difficult at all. Its not uncommon for me to avoid taking a wizard altogether. Why? DRUIDS. I have never seen a wizard able to defend against Insect Plague. No save, splits to multiple enemies, no protections block it, shuts down spellcasting altogether. MUCH easier than any wizard duel. Alternatively, an Inquisiter Paladin, or Wizard Slayer fighter, or Bard (That high level dispel magic). Hilariously wizards/sorcerors are only like, the 5th best class to beat another wizard.
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Anyway, yes BG2 is better, by far. It's not even close. Perhaps because i grew up with DnD and love the Setting so much i might be biased a bit. However just compare the arcane spellbook to Deadfires and it's quite clear. Deadfire doesn't come close to the depth of BG2.
By the same coin you can take the entire set of skills of any of the fighter classes and compare them to BG2 and say BG2 doesn't hold a candle to Deadfire. Arguably that's an even more important case since it distributes the complexity and micromanaging more towards all classes and thus all characters, and thus in practice non-caster types are made into active roles opposite to the usual auto-attack bots that they are in the IE games. Even if the depth of the wizard/mage is reduced (I don't see how it is, but let's pretend it is so), it is pretty clearly made up for in other areas.
An Epic Level fighter does get actives though but yea i do agree that some classes are Kind of bland in BG2. However it is a Party game so you will have casters in your Group Right? Could you imagine a spell like Mislead or Simulacrum in Deadfire? it would get nerfed into he Ground immediately for the sake of "balance". There were some fun Things in the game Right after launch but all of it got taken care of. Left is a very shallow Gameplay experience no matter which class you Play.
It's funny to me that you speak of balance in such a sneering fashion: you see, I played through Baldur's Gate II on insane mode again earlier this year, right before the release of Deadfire and not even *once* did I either use Mislead or Simulacrum, or even consider adding them to my spellbook repertoire. Why, when all I need to cast to trample through practically every fight is Haste and the occasional Breach, Stoneskin or Remove Magic? And later in the game the occasional Horrid Wilting and Dragon's Breath just to clear out large enough mobs faster. Ultimately Haste is such a powerful ability and such an immediately determining spell that it renders just about every encounter absolutely trivial. This is why balance is important. If the same action turns every fight into an absolute stomp, then why even consider other options? Even in its release form I had more incentive to read through the spells and abilities in Deadfire than I did through two thirds of the arcane spellbook in Baldur's Gate II. Unbalanced makes for shallow, because it heavily promotes a set build and style of play which will also trivialize almost every encounter, whilst making fringe builds unviable and thus discouraging players from attempting them.
And this is even worse of an issue in the Baldur's Gate saga compared to Deadfire when you take into account gameplay as a whole and not merely combat. You plan on playing a pacifist route, and either sneak or talk your way through as many encounters as you can? Well, too bad, enemies be enemies and stealth, while doable, comes at the cost of piles of great loot and XP and at the benefit of... Nothing at all. Not to mention it hardly leads to a fun experience. At the very least the series sort of justifies the unilaterality of action relatively well what with murder being in your blood and all, but really it hardly makes for a flexible system that accounts for various styles of play the way Deadfire actually does, from a sheer mechanical standpoint at least.
Yes and no. Balance is important, every class needs to be viable at least. But not every class needs to be equal. Going to your haste example though. The existenc of haste does not make other spells useless. You CAN use it to solve a large number of encounters, but you don't have to. Its your choice. I really like BG2's difficulty level because its not so high that there is one right way to solve any problem. A semi clever player can find ways to eschew all of the "broken" spells and still have a reasonable time beating the game. Tuning the difficulty too high creates a scenario where there is one way to solve any problem and anything else will get you killed. This destroys player choice far more than a handful of overpowered spells.
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I kinda wish these expansion dlcs would be set AFTER the main game. As much as I loved the White March from PoE1, I wasn't a fan of how much it trivialized the rest of the game after playing it.
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Ascension is great except for the final fight, which is so ridiculous that I uninstalled the whole mod as soon as I saw what it contained. There are characters who, once defeated, should remain so, otherwise they lose all dignity and meaning.
Agreed. And while the Five were already mentioned as those who should have remained dead, they left out another crucial pair who got resurrected in that last battle, who for me are even more greviously done so. Overall I have to also say that, despite the increased difficulty for the fights with the Five which is all well and good, I can't really tell what was *else* was added, narratively, to Throne of Bhaal via Ascension. There are things I thought were Ascension-specific but turned out to be in the vanilla game already. There's Sarevok reuniting with his sword, I suppose that is alright enough... Overall I can't say it changed my experience much from a narrative perspective.
For pre-EE ToB, it did a lot. There are a TON of bugfixes that never got an official patch, for instance, a PROGRAMMING TYPO prevented 90% of Imoen's banters and interjections from ever triggering (poor npc can't catch a break). You some new lines for Sarevok (Sword and possibly tamoko related), and some new lines for Imoen as well as new abilities (She starts having the nightmares charname had in BG1 as well developing some Bhaal powers and it FREAKS HER OUT), charname gets some new Bhaal abilities (which makes the final fight MUCH easier if used properly). You also get a new option to deal with Balthazar. In the EEs, some of these bugs have finally been officially patched, so Ascension basically gets you some new lines for Immy and Mr.S, new abilities for Immy and Charname, and a kick butt new final battle (which I absolutely adore).
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Aedyr makes the most sense. We just had a game of untamed wilderness islands to explore full of exotic locales and death, why do we want another game themed on exploration of exotic locales and death right after it?
Also Aedyr is the most powerful current country, has a lot happening politically, and it is very different in culture/atmosphere than any of the previous games locations. The only other option would be that place Rekke is from, of the Valian Republics which I feel like we had enough of for a bit in the last game also.
Because so much of Deadfire's playtime is spent exploring the gigantic unnecessary city. The "islands" we get to explore are the size of a living room and have maybe 2 encounters on them. I want to properly explore an untamed wilderness, ancient ruins, etc.
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@KDubya I agree fully with your first paragraph but lets be fair here. ".If I do every quest and explore every island except the main plot no one cares, there is no sense of urgency to chase after and engage a 300 foot tall god." BG2 had this exact same problem.
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I have never really cared for the politics and cultures of races in games. I want to see untamed wilds and bizarre ecosystems. Give me old ruins and utamed jungles with strange, wonderful, and dangerous creatures. Towns and cities are the most boring parts of any game.
It sounds like the ThemePark NotRPGs made by WeDoNotMakeActualRPGsAnymore are for you.
I don't even know what you are trying to say.
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I have never really cared for the politics and cultures of races in games. I want to see untamed wilds and bizarre ecosystems. Give me old ruins and utamed jungles with strange, wonderful, and dangerous creatures. Towns and cities are the most boring parts of any game.
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You can do it, the party members are under your control just as much as the player character. Your companions' unique classes and abilities are specifically for you to use. The game isn't... taunting you(???)
No, I CAN'T. I cannot make a character with the cool class. I HAVE to dredge someone else along, and I'm stuck with that NPC just to try the new tools. What if I don't like their personality? What if I want to play around with stats and different builds? I CAN'T do any of that.
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I agree.
Back in 2017 I made a thread myself about races in Pillars all being generally humans...
Yeah well, that's true of all invented beings, ever.
The Hanar, Buggers from "Ender's Game", Starro from the DC universe, the Angels from "Out of the Silent Planet", etc. There are quite a few non-humanoid races out there.
I believe they're talking about mental, rather than physical characteristics. So Hanar are just very polite humans in a squid costume, Buggers are telepathic humans in bug costumes, etc.
EDIT: The philosopher Thomas Nagel actually wrote about this idea in his paper "What is it like to be a bat?"
Then Buggers would still stand out. They are an insect Hive-mind with no concept of the individual. The Hanar work similarly, they ahd to learn how to interact with the other races. This isn't even bringing up the Great Old Ones from Lovecraft's stories.
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On the other hand it's nice for party members to have something unique about them
Make thier personality what makes them unique. Or give them a special ability or equipement. Don't wave fun classes in my face and go, "Haha you can't do this."
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I agree.
Back in 2017 I made a thread myself about races in Pillars all being generally humans...
Yeah well, that's true of all invented beings, ever.
The Hanar, Buggers from "Ender's Game", Starro from the DC universe, the Angels from "Out of the Silent Planet", etc. There are quite a few non-humanoid races out there.
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Vatnir looks amazing as well as other concepts.
But I'm slightly disappointed he's sidekick and not companion.
Yeah, if he's the leader of this doomsday cult, then he must play a significant role in the story. You'd think that would be companion worthy. I guess any new party members in the DLCs will be sidekick from now on.
I hate to complain, because it looks awesome, but it would have been really really nice if they added the Priest of Rymrgand class or the new Godlike as selectable options for your main character.
I agree. I HATE it when games go, "Looks at al this cool stuff NPCs can use. Want to use it? Too bad!" Players should have access to all the tools npcs do.
Request: An option to slow down experiance gain
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Normally I don't go for this kind of thing, but Obsidian is terrible at balancing exp gains. In RPGs, experience is kinda the main indicator of progression for your character, so when I hit cap, I lose a lot of drive to keep playing past a certain point. In PoE1, even with the expansion, I regularly hit cap before even hitting chapter 3. Deadfire has it even worse, giving us tons of exp and now there are confrimed 3 expanions, two of which do nothing to raise the exp cap. So you are spending hours upon hours of conent maxed out. I'm all for reducing exp gain for a better sense of progression.