Ymarsakar

If they are going to go with soul bound weapons, the least they could do was leave my builds alone and not take -6 accuracy just because my class uses a non standard weapon as their focus. Soul bound weapons was already too Warcrafty and micro ish, and designed for grinding xp to get new/random bonuses on each replay. The main poster reminds me of those micromanagement fanatics in the Stellaris forums. They tend to go on for pages and days and days, even though Clausewitz is easily moddable.

Skirge01 Auto Pause enemy sighted, and maybe per ability use too until you get used to it. But the method I found most useful when Pillars was new, was using one character, killing one guard at some random village, and testing how each class worked. Start small, and slow. If you start with six characters you have no idea how they work, it can be overwhelming. The key is to use the same enemy, preferably high DR and endurance regen. Early game, you can use Eder or your PC against the backer NPCs with high armor. Then just make sure you reload. Fighting at taverns is also pretty nice, as you can hire adventurers and what not, rest, save, test, reload, test, reload, test, reload. Giving yourself money via the console Giveplayermoney lets you hire many different classes and combos, if you don't want to wait until you get your companion npcs. Line of sight to walls can block spells and bounce them, such as crackling bolt, rolling fire, and some other stuff. Some terrain is also impassable, and doesn't allow LOS. This means you can create death funnels and kill zones, bottlenecking enemies. CC means crowd control. Anything that stops an enemy from doing an action or stops their mobility. Some CC is more powerful than others. The way to use aoe spells that harm your party, is to either put your casters at the front in the beginning, such as using overwhelming wave, and then sliding them into the back by closing the gap. The two main tanks split apart and let the druid cast his wave, then they close ranks to stop enemies. Requires timing and pause. Of course, if you don't want to do that micro, you can just flank them. Have the caster be stealthed and use the tank to pull the enemies so that the caster is 90 degrees to the main enemies. As for tanks vs dps, this game has a lot of hybrid classes compared to games with pure tanks or pure dps archers. So any class in this game can be built for high defense or high dps, but they won't be equal obviously. So a fighter already has a lot of defense and self regen, and making him into a dps archer is certainly feasible, especially if you pump might which affects the self regen and the damage dealt. A monk is like a dps tank, he does almost all his damage melee and when he takes damage, so when your casters accidentally aoe harms the monk, the monk gets more powerful dps wise, unless he just gets knocked out. ADD: To respond to how to build classes that aren't dps/tanks, you generally need a certain kind of class like the chanter or paladin. So instead of dps tanks, they are tank healers instead, primarily. They still do dps, but not near what a level 11 rogue/cipher/ranger does at equal levels. The tank healer usually takes talents in defense and healing. The Druid melee tank and the Muscle Wizard, are also examples of how to do weird things with classes that normally aren't at the front.

As I mentioned in another thread, I surmise that their problem might be that they are getting too many offers. Because they have been getting too many offers, perhaps like Paradox's World of Darkness, recently. And due to those offers and NDA, they can't say anything. But they haven't rejected everything as well, since they might need the money flow or have people sitting around not doing anything. It hasn't been a concern since they were working on White March part 2. But now that's done, people are itching to get at the answers now.

Traps can be useful, but I would prefer that the resource be more easily usable, not in its own separate item inventory setup. Perhaps 1 single trap item, that has different effects depending on which ability you select. Or perhaps more traps and more per day, at certain levels of the mechanics skill, sort of like the new survival skill gives different bonuses. Do a gameflow comparison of what steps the player uses to get 3-6 traps per encounter, vs what the survival rest bonus requires the player to do to get benefits from. Big difference. It's a gameflow problem, a micro problem, an inventory management problem, and maybe a UI problem as well.

Paradox acquired the rights and ownership of the White [Wolf] World of Darkness titles. My guess is that they pitched it to Obsidian as a project they could work jointly on. That might explain why the POE2 sequel has been pushed off towards the way future, although to a large company like Obsidian, that might just be 6-12 months. Obsidian's reputation as a "pinch hitter" for various other people's copyright titles, is well known by now. Having their own IP and successful kickstarter would have restored whatever confidence publishers had felt was lacking in their direction. CCP was the previous owner of the White Wolf properties, but CCP did a reinstall of their corporate hierarchy and priorities. As for POE2, I would surmise that pre production has already been in the works since White March 1 at least. Pre production could last 6 months or a year or more depending. That's where a core team of writers and artists sit down, and start hashing out the unique lore and look of the world. Maybe some level designs. The portraits in Pillars should have told them that they didn't have enough time to create a distinctive look. Card games, for example, have very good 2d aesthetics, because that's all they have to work with. And deviant art has done some interesting takes on various topics. I wouldn't mind if they took the time to hire unique artists with their own style, just like they hired a lot of writers. This would give the artists enough time to hand paint or draw or 3d paint, the portraits that they feel is right. Speaking of hand painting card graphics... isn't that what Eastern Reach allowed them to do. A lot of people say Day 1 or Day 5 DLC is because their artists have nothing to do when the game is in alpha or beta or whatever, so they have them make DLCs. And here Obsidian is saying, "no, we just pitch a card game that only uses artists for the fans".

As a story character, she works well. As a companion that has to interact in a party with other NPCs or humans, she's incomplete and too specialized. She would have made for a great future villainess, if you add her to the main player's childhood background intro. Of course Chris Av's design with her involved more dialogue, more interactions, and more gameplayish elements, which were cut. What there was of the content, was interesting, but isolated or specialized. Something was missing, obviously. Why didn't that happen to Durance? Mostly because he loves to be hated and that's how Chris Av wrote him towards the other party. At least he has a relationship to the other party members. And due to Eder's certain background... it actually provided a bit of inter party rpg conflict. At least, theoretically on the lore side. You get one side of the story, and then you get the other side of the story. They balance each other out.

The rogue thing was because reckless assault stacked every time you reloaded the game, due to being a modal active effect, but now save games remove active effects aggressively, checking for duplicates or suppressing active effects if they try to stack. I started the game in 1.0 and finished it sometime later in 2.0 white march part 1. So to me, all the patches didn't really bother me. On the flipside even, it was better to experience the old content just so I could compare it to the new tactical difficulty. The balance changes have probably been finalized for most classes, they'll be working on POE2 I expect. The number of things they have to fix are normally the extra stuff they added in for White March. The modified Unity engine that Pillars is based on isn't easy to mod, because there is no externalized assets and files. CK2, custom built Clausewitz, is very easy to mod in comparison. "I think this engine is a dead end myself; it's just too esoteric and too prone to odd little bugs. " I disagree, the engine is workable. Any engine not designed for modding will be esoteric. Even BG2 had enormous bugs dealing with the tactical system, which the tactical mods constantly had to fix and rebalance because they changed even more things. This is what I call subjectively viewing something based on the outcome, and not on the actual details of the engine itself.

The sanity check is usually the breathing test for alcohol. Meaning somebody crazy doesn't know right from wrong because they think they can breathe in water or fly in the air. There's an unreality to their train of thought of behavior. However, that doesn't explain how psychopaths and sociopaths, or people likeDurance, know how to function in a normal or even abnormal society. If these people were truly crazy, they would be spotted and they would end up in jail, in a fire, or just accidentally "falling" off a pier thinking they are going into their god's embrace. But they don't do that, because they are still rational, rationalizing, and thinking logically about this reality. If they understand that fire hurts and using fire shatters a soul, that's logic. Tools don't have those thoughts on their own, somebody would have to program it in to them. If a tool suddenly figures out the best way to "protect me" without my input, that's no longer a tool, but some kind of autonomous spirit. Even if a person's ideas are crazy by this society's standards, put them into another time and place, like Aztec supremes, and they would fit right in and be hailed as "virtuous". It is not so easy to get into a person's head and figure out what they are thinking of or not at all, but one can see how rational and correct their actions were. A person that puts his hand in the fire, thinking it is cool like water, really is crazy and incapable of being responsible, because he has become detached from this reality. He's in some other reality. However, what people normally call serial killers, mass murderers, sociopaths, psychopaths, are middle to high functioning. They know how this reality works. They play within the rules to exploit the rules. They know what the rules are. Thus they know by our standards, what they are doing is wrong. But by their hierarchy's standards, it may be righteous. A person that couldn't tell the difference, would be incapable of functioning, even in self survival.

True, but the limitation is only to the sub genre in the VNs for bishoujo games. For otome and the other variations, the flip tends to be reversed. Instead of being 9 females, 1 male plus his male side kick funny guy (batman and robin), otome games have a 7 to 3 or 9 to 1 ratio in favor of men. Yojimbo (bodyguard) might be a good example of that genre. This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but the best game in the series had an unvoiced protagonist. It was when BioWare announced that DA2 would have a fully voiced protagonist that I sensed the impending doom of the franchise as a quality role-playing experience. Are you referring to Dragon Age 1? If not, which best game in the series?

When I stole spells I got those three spell icons and they had some kind of timer on them (they turned grey in a clockwise motion if you know what I mean). In this time I could cast those spells as many times as I want (and my speed allowed - Blood Thirst helped). If the timer runs out, the spell is gone. Just look at my screenshot. I can't say how many times I casted Calling the World's Maw. Maybe 20 times? Don't know exactly. That's how major grimoire and minor grimoire imprint works now. You get some random x level spells, then you have x seconds to cast them as much as you want. 0 recovery speed and high dexterity wizard. I guess it makes up for them removing some spell copies from essential phantom and other clones. Makes for a more interesting wizard vs caster face off. A Counter Magic Tank.

I'm reasonably familiar with the game and I prefer low-maintance characters with lots of passive abilities and one or two trump-cards. I don't like to be reliant on healing, since in this game healing is rarely, if ever, instant. Monk and a retaliation build cipher might be interesting. Chanters also have that special resource, part of the 3 hybrid classes. In a full party, the chanter is low maintenance, but in a two person party, it might be too low maintenance to be fun

It would be nice if they have actual stats for the animal companion. I would like to know the various differences between stag/bear/boar, etc. Since I don't use ranger player characters. They added in some per/dex for Sagani's fox, but the other stats are kind of invisible, you have to check the log in combat.

The priest tends to work well with barbarians or a paladin. Dire crits. ACC buffs. Paladin heals and ACC buffs. My level 4 barbarian was able to tank the mini boss matron in level 3 caed nua. 2 criticals, 1 hit. 4th hit downed em, but it took a long time. Not that I could do any damage given half my party had been "wiped out" by battering ram, due to bad positioning. So the barb and 1-2 guys wasn't going to damage Z druidess. But even with 30 deflection against the 90-105 ACC of the Z matron, the barbarian still lasted long enough for a full party to take good advantage. 140 endurance with high con. I was doing some experimentation, so punted out Eder and Kana, replaced em with npc rogue and npc barbarian. My monk was main tank with 60 def using dual hatchets and cautious attack. As for CC, if barbs can interrupt as well as the Wall of Fire... then yea, I'd go with interrupts.

I would think Tolkien would be pro spiritualism and anti materialism. As for technological spread, the Europeans had developed strong warrior survival skills from being raided by Muslims and Vikings over centuries. The weaklings died off or were taken off as slaves, never to be seen again. The Chinese had gunpowder, of a sort, but when the Europeans acquired, they immediately started thinking about practical warfare benefits. Just as stirrups came from nomadic horse archer tribes. The more technologically inclined civilizations that had used horses before, somehow didn't develop them. Not even the Byzantine Empire had stirrups until they copied it from the hordes and nomadic tribes. Some technologies just advance faster in certain cultures. Stirrups were what made the German, Frankish, and French knights dangerous on the battlefield as a main flank. Because it allowed the entire weight of man and horse to be brought to bear in a charge and in melee as well. Although the nomadic tribes were said to be so good with horse and arrow, that they could shoot backwards, hanging from the side, dodge blows while the horse is galloping, and other acrobatic melee feats.

Animals used to have more severe penalties for rangers, but the code was hard to hash out in Unity, so they rebalanced the class and made it easier to use, with less inter connection between the ranger pet and ranger. I haven't noticed the ranger's stealth skill affecting Sagani's fox. Originally the design was to have the ranger take part of the health damage from their pet's endurance damage.

A CRPG simulates role playing elements, but perhaps not as well as a human DM could do so using rules and dice games. The issue with Pillars is how broad the design limit for the initial conditions that players can set for themselves. That generates "reactivity", but the diversity is so diverse that it has diffused itself. Take any strong substance, water it down, and you can get a lot of it, but it's still diluted. A normal table top or war game, had certain limitations. The experience was customized for your player only, because nobody else's combination mattered if they weren't part of the party or part of the DM creation. The pillars critical path, which is well done, is not customized for the player, because the player could be any number of combination of background, race, stat, etc. So a the critical path had to made where all that stuff doesn't matter. But if all that stuff doesn't matter to the story, except some permutations which you can replay for flavor, then what does matter? Why do RPGs even have stats to begin with. Megatravellers 2, the PC game, was like the Traveler rpg ruleset game. I spent a long time generating characters for that, and they both had a story, a mechanical, a tactical, and a role playing effect in game. With so many rules and skill limits, it might have felt constraining to some, but to me it felt like a deeper world to learn. That didn't even have sprites. So it wasn't an engine limitation or effect. But a conscious design choice. It was another way to ensure the main story could take place irregardless of who made up the party, but the game mechanics of the world were so deep, I easily forgot that my character skills didn't matter to the story. Because it was extremely difficult even to finish one quest on a world, let alone the dozens of other worlds out there, plus the critical path. Partially because there was no journal and I spent a lot of time making money in the slot casinos. PST took the reverse line, by focusing almost everything on a pre created character and background. Like a novel would. Multi classing and class change was at will for the MC there, which I thought was a great game feature that didn't get very popular. Even though people seem to do it all the time switching their class in rpg games like Pillars, trying out new stuff. POE was kickstarted with BG2 and Infinity Engine games in mind as a model. So they succeeded in that vision mark.

The wound mechanic on the monk takes some getting used to. Other than the con stat and int maybe affecting wound durations, equipment like armor and weapons make a significant difference to monk playstyles. So you have to ensure they take damage at the beginning of the fight to use their abilities, and so that at least one enemy later on in the fight is attacking the monk. Or you can just use harmful aoes on the monk and do priest aoe heals, that's another way to leverage the wound mechanics of the monk as an off tank.

White March has all those items which can be souped up with bonuses, to support the tactical game. Design wise, a lot of the replay content is the tactical real time pause combat mechanics. But unlike BG2 which also had tactical mods that made certain enemies immune to often used powers, you can't easily add in another story npc with its own writing or voice dialogue to Pillars, to break up the pace of the quest plots. It's a one time deal, so far. In BG2, everytime I replayed through the damn Irenicus dungeon again, there would usually be some new story content, npcs, quests, etc while I also get a different tactical experience. I think I finally found a mod to remove Irenicus dungeon entirely.

Reviewers and many player hated the soul sucking mechanic in NWN2. I hated the engine and 3d camera instead, as well as the power creep later on.

That's true of game companies and publishers before Kickstarter too. The more money they have, the less freedom, because they have to sell something to somebody. They have license limitations, money may prevent them from starting fresh, 4x genre limitations may demand unfreshness, games have to have certain elements in it.Their only freedom is whether to choose to do business or not. But before the internet and what not, Japan had created its own market category of how to sell products and make a living off of it. The pre internet Kickstarter so to speak. Which would be fan cons and various sub culture products, like light novels or manga and their various fan derivations. The US also had its various artistic communities back in 1950, before they were destroyed or wiped out by larger organizations.

I am still waiting to hear the part where you guys explain how this makes it so his actions aren't reprehensible, he is somehow not morally bankrupt, and is redeemable in some way. In fact the way you guys phrase it he is basically a dog with rabies and the only option now is to put the poor bugger down. His actions are reprehensible, but he's not morally bankrupt because he's not capable of making good, rational, morally upright decisions. He is *broken*. The thoughts, ideas, concepts, and actions that he takes *seem* reasonable to him *because his soul is damaged and he's no longer functional*. He *might* be redeemable, if there were some way to repair the damage that was done to him so that he he's capable of making sane, rational decisions again. Durance is no more culpable for the things he says and does than a man in a deep, permanent psychotic state would be. That means Durance isn't a human, he's just a tool. Which he is, of course. Humans with moral agency have free will, and thus moral agency. The good or evil of a tool is up to the user. The question then becomes, if anyone can be transformed from person to tool by the Authorities, what makes anyone else immune to the proscription? Any Authority, the State included, has the power to determine who is psychotic and what penalties that requires. Which merely means that might makes right.

To provide some illustrations and elaboration on the previous Visual novel topic: Japan tends to combine and hybridize genres together, such as science fiction, fantasy, and RPG (grinding) epic journeys. But the number one genre connecting visual novels together would probably be romance, and then secondly adventure, with action/rpg/simulation being close afterwards. That means the demographic links to BG2 romance mods. Mass Effect romance characters. Planescape Torment, the weird Love Triangle Between Anna/Grace/MC. But no matter how you slice that one apart, it was still two romances. ************* I don't have any complaints about the writing in Pillars or White March. What I usually notice is how the writing is integrated into the game design, the gameplay, the companion background/stories, and the actual game mechanics. Some of it could do with some iteration improvements. I like Durance's lore stories, since it gives me a better read on his character, if I'm the one interrogating him, rather than someone narrating for him (like those epilogues do). Shadowrun npc backgrounds are always nice mini stories within a primary plot. The backer beta NPCs had interesting stories, but very blackhole ish gameplay. Meaning, no gameplay other than clicking on it. Which might be interesting reading a book... if it wasn't 55+ short stories that weren't more than a page long... Maerwald was a pretty good intro, maybe due to the voice tones. The reason why people didn't understand it is because the "Watcher" thing is too abstract. The player has no idea what it means or how it is used in the game. For someone who read all the lorebooks on Pillars wiki before playing the game, it is much easier to understand. Of course, I did do that. Reading that small text in game is bad. Reading online, is good. A close approximation to PST as a visual novel might be Utawarerumono the PC RPG VN. For obvious reasons. As for Ravel, she would be the yandere that is threatening your relationship, of course. So a mix of romance/horror/zombie survival. It's funny, I would actually pay big bucks for a PS:T visual novel. Hmmm... Maybe something to look into. Oh, I could def see PS:T, or something similar, making a kick ass VN. The medium is perfectly capable of excelling at telling that kind of story. I'd honestly prefer it; what gameplay there is in Torment just gets in the way. It's just Japan has chosen to use the VN medium has led to a genre with a rather...different..focus. Ugh, now I'm thinking of a pre-teen Really 700 Years Old Ravel in some weird love rhombus with Anna, Grace, and TNO. These are not good thoughts. PST would fit closer to what Nitro Plus puts out. Chaos;Head , Steins;gate, stuff like that. Very different atmosphere.

I always thought that was pretty strange. The Maiar know how gunpowder is formed, but the kingdoms don't use it for weapons. Maybe that's Sauron's field of work.

Two things they can design in. Rests that aren't 8 hours long, shorter or mechanically different, as in in combat rather than out of combat. That way, you may be resting, but half your party is also not doing anything. Sort of like in XCOM 2. Having 1 hour rests plus 8 hour rests, might make it easier to balance. Since you can incrementalize it better. Instead of fully restoring the player's spells each 8 hours. You can give the player smaller rest periods, which restore smaller powers, and thus can more greatly limit the full rest periods and modify game difficulty to suit. The other one would be tying the number of rests to the game plot, Watcher abilities, making a central mechanic as in NWN Mask of the Betrayer. Instead of limiting the player to a timed main quest, you limit the player on the micro/tactical level, rather than the strategic/logistical level.

The thing is, in some cultures the "crazy stuff" is actually normal. Check out Aztec priests and human hearts.