MReed

This is a joke, right? Cities: Skylines is still in the top 10 fastest selling games on Steam (since March 10th, so ~40 days now), has been on that list more or less continuously since it was released (despite several high profile AAA launches), and has just passed 1 million units sold (according to SteamSpy). And it has done all of this at a tiny fraction of the budget of SimCity 2014? If that's not hitting it out of the park, then I think your standards are unreasonable, to say the least. Now, it is perfectly reasonable to say that PoE hasn't (and won't) "crushed" DAI, but I suspect it probably has met or exceeded Obsidian's internal sales targets -- in short, "an OK entrance to the industry". But to say the same thing about Skylines...

It cannot, because what you are looking for is called "scripting", and the developers did not implement scripting in the game. Why they did that depends on your perspective, but the simple fact is that it doesn't exist. It is possible that 3rd party mod could do what you want, but that's at the mercy of the folks who develop mods (of which there aren't many at this point).

Iovara never says that the gods don't exist -- just that they aren't gods as she (and most people of the game world) would define gods. I would say it is reasonable to assert that any being truly worthy of the designation of a god must, at the very least, not be the creation of those who are intended to worship it, and the dieties in this world don't meet that criteria. It is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, so that's obviously not what the Ethosian's did. However, it is possible to prove that something cannot exist (is physically impossible) if one can establish laws that are both universal and comprehensive in nature. Therefore, I assume, that what the Ethosian's actually did was prove both of the following: 1) It is impossible for the universe to be created -- the universe has a starting point, and no being could have existed before this point. 2) If something is possible to do, then any entity in the universe can perform that action (given, obviously, the right knowledge which leads to the creation of the right tools). This isn't possible in the real world, because we can't rule out absolutely the possibility of an undetectable "spirit realm" that might influence the material world in some way, but... In the game world, the Ethosian's proved that such a realm exists, measured its properties, and so forth -- armed with this information it might be possible to prove the above statements. If both of these statements are true, then certainly none of the dieties that have been worshiped on Earth could exist (all religions include creation myths, all of which have the gods predating the universe, for example, and all religions grant deities powers that man cannot harness). "Might" is the key word -- it is entirely possible that the Ethosian's were wrong in their belief that there are no gods -- but, regardless, they clearly believed that no gods existed, and they did create the gods that are worshiped today. The dilemma posed at the end of the game is straightforward: "Is it better for people to believe a lie that improves their quality of life, or know the truth and suffer the consequences?" To put this in much more concrete terms: if you were an astronomer, and detected a "dinosaur killer" asteroid was going to hit the earth next week, would you tell anyone? After all, Hollywood movies aside, a week's notice isn't enough time to do anything productive to mitigate or avoid the oncoming disaster, and the resulting panic from publicizing the news would simply ensure that people die sooner (in riots) rather than later (due to the consequences of the asteroid impact). Thaos has answered this question for himself -- you definitely shouldn't tell anyone, should actively work (up to and including murder -- after all, they are going die next week anyway) to prevent other astronomer's from realizing the problem, and might even consider suicide to totally eliminate any chance of the information being released. Do you agree with his answer? Personally, I don't -- I'd rather know then not know, but there is a wide diversity of opinions on this topic. You are correct that, at some level, the player's answer to this question doesn't matter, as he/she will be unable to convince anyone of its truth (and, in any case, may not believe it for him/herself, although fairly strong evidence has been offered in its support). However, like most philosophical questions, the goal is to encourage the player to question his or her beliefs and determine what is really more important -- "truth" or "comfort". Unfortunately, the game implies that the machine reached "critical mass" (enough souls to re-empower Woedica) immediately after the final confrontation, which is obviously contrived. However, you could stretch and contort a bit and argue that no, that's not what happened -- all you are doing is deciding what to do with the souls that are already gathered, which might be 1% of the total required to re-empower Woedica. If you choose to assist Woedica, she gets a "boost", but not a sufficient boost to make her clearly superior to all the other gods. The ending text doesn't contradict this perspective (but doesn't support it either). And Woedica doesn't kill the PC if he/she supports her.

Thaos is actually running two, unrelated, plots at the same time: * Sucking out massive number of souls to re-enpower Woedica -- as far as I can tell, the only motivation behind this is "She's my patron" rather than any particular support for Woedica's policies and the like. This is the origin of the Hollowborn epidemic, and is what the player witnesses at the start of the game. * Discrediting animancy.-- this is motivated by the desire to keep the origins / nature of the gods secret. If animancy is allowed to advance far enough, the secret would inevitably by uncovered as the techniques that the animanciers are trying to uncover are the same techniques that the Ethosians (sp?) used to create the gods in the first place: obviously, they have a long way to go, but Thaos is a very pro-active sort of person. Note that the player is intended to draw a parallel between medicine in, say, the 1300-1400s (in Europe) and the current state of animancy: during this period of time, medical "treatment" was as likely to hurt as it was to help, but that's the way science works -- you have to try stuff, collect data, and see what works and what doesn't. While the game doesn't mention it, it seems highly likely that the LK is acting to ensure that the animancer's research is as harmful as possible in general. For example, some animancer's (perhaps even most) might be in the employ of the LK (knowingly or unknowingly), which would make progress very difficult -- an honest animancer gets a positive result, but then "fake" animancer's report that they are unable to reproduce the results, discrediting him or her. As has already been pointed out, the animancer's did /not/ activate the machine in Heritage Hills: the LK did that, intending that the animancer's would be blamed. The fact that souls were collected by this exercise is irrelevant (the souls, after all, still resided in the machine, as you could put them to use if you chose to do so). If the machine had happened to simply be a weapon (or was a device that didn't have a harmful effect, but could be rigged to explode), then that would have suited the LK's purpose here just as well, which is to provide support for the "animancy is dangerous" position. The Duc did send in soldiers (well, the Crucible Knights did) -- they all died. That's why you were allowed in -- to find out what happened to the last group of CKs that entered. Admittedly, it is a reasonable question to ask "Um, doesn't that mean that the CK kinda suck big time?", but... That's a pretty standard troope in CRPGs, so I don't think blaming the game for this is reasonable. If soldiers and police could actually do their jobs effectively then 85-95% of the side quests offered in a CRPG would no longer be viable.

The problem is step 4 -- you don't learn that the antagonist is part of the mysterious organization, until /after/ you've already started to investigate said organization. It isn't a fatal flaw because, as some one pointed out in this thread, a protagonist of a cRPG who /isn't/ curious isn't a valid character type (such a character would never start an adventure in the first place, or would end it ASAP), and therefore it is reasonable for to expect the protagonist to investigate a "mysterious organization" simply because it *is* mysterious. But nevertheless, it is a defect (in my opinion), which could be closed by having someone (the Steward being an obvious choice) to provide more concrete guidance to the PC. After all, she's lived a very long time, and many interesting characters have passed through the Keep -- there really isn't any reason that she couldn't provide guidance pointing towards either Lady Webb and / or identifying the mysterious organization as someone who might be capable of the acts that the PC has witnessed -- either would tighten up the plot considerably.

If that's really all you want, couldn't you just save the game, clear out an area, then restore the game to clear out the enemies again? After all with no xp and little loot, there wouldn't be any character progression between "passes", so it seems like this would meet your requirements.

The main problem with the main quest in PoE is that there is a horrible disconnect (I didn't realize this until it was pointed out to me) -- there is no logical connection between "I've gained my stronghold" and "Now I'm in Defiance Bay and investigating the activities of a mysterious organization" (spoilers omitted). I overlooked this lack of connection because I considered "investigating the mysterious organization" as "just another side quest in the dozens that I had within minutes of arriving in Defiance Bay", but... Honestly, it really doesn't make any sense that you even be in Defiance Bay other than "Well, you don't have anywhere else to go". The main story line quests in BG1 and DAO might be simple or cliched, but at least they didn't have any gaps like this. On build diversity -- I consider the presence of multi/dual class options to be /part of/ build diversity, not an "extra". If you limit the discussion in BG1 to only the basic classes, then yeah, PoE has better build diversity, but that's unfairly penalizing BG1 -- where else are you going to give BG1 credit for including mult/dual classes? On the companions in DAO -- I tend to agree that they were weak in comparison to some other Bioware games, but I'm not trying to evaluate them on some absolute scale or anything -- just against the PoE companions. And by that standard, the PoE companions are very inferior.

My two cents: This game is on-par with DA:O, which in turn is on-par with BG1. PoE is superior to BG1 in the area of side quests (especially quest diversity) companions, and reactivity (choice & consequences), but inferior in terms of combat mechanics, build diversity / complexity, and the main quest. PoE is superior to DAO in the areas of area design / diversity, and build diversity / complexity, but inferior in terms of companions (by lots), choice and consequences, and the main quest (but not by much). It is inferior to IWD1/2 and BG2, although for very different reasons (IWD1/2 was nothing more than hack & slash -- but it was good hack and slash). I don't consider PST to be in the same category as any of these games (it is closer to a visual novel than anything else). If I had spent $40 for it, I'd probably feel that I got my money's worth, but... That's not what I paid for it, and the extras that I got don't even come close to making up the extra value. All of the above is my opinion, obviously, but that's what the OP asked for...

Kinda like Tharos in this game? Yeah, I agree, but such a character archetype is poorly suited for a companion -- a companion, by their very nature, is a follower, and the only way such a character would put him/herself in such a degrading (from their POV) is if it supported his/her ultimate objectives. And, almost certainly, that would lead to conflict with the PC (for most PC personalities, at least). A companion that CAN betray you might be interesting -- one that inevitably WILL betray you.... Not so much. See poor old Youshi in BG2, for example.

Evil /does/ have a real meaning -- within the context of a culture. The fact that a different culture might have attach very, very different meanings to the terms, and that even within a single culture there may be lively debate on certain topics is irrelevant. The vast majority of players share a common set of cultural values, and those values inform us that the following things are "evil", and people who do them willingly and without remorse are "evil" people: * Murder * Torture / abuse * Rape * Theft * Slavery / kidnapping Again, reasonable people have profound disagreements around edge cases -- most people would agree that forcing a child to get a shot is OK, but if you've ever been in a pediatrician's office when a 4 year old is get a vaccine... But there is wide agreement /on the basics/, and any NPC that violates these norms will be given the evil tag, regardless of whether the game treats the character that way. If the game was set in the old empire (whatever it's name is) then slavery would be considered good -- but the regardless of how the game treats it, the /players/ would consider an enthusiastic slave-owner companion as evil. Being a moral relativist doesn't mean that good and evil become meaningless terms -- it just means that you have to attach a frame of reference to the terms whenever you use them, and acknowledge that no one frame of reference is "privileged" over any other. The morality of the Aztec Empire is just as valid as modern western morality, but that's only relevant if I have an ancient Aztec sitting in front of me, or I'm reading a novel / history set in those times.

Um, yeah, it would be.... Something along those lines would be 100% satisfactory to me -- honestly, something a bit milder would work as well. Evil is a term with real meaning and (while there is loads of debate around edge cases), there is general agreement that people who do certain things without extraordinary justification AND lack remorse for what they have done are "evil" -- whether a deity exists to recognize their actions or not.

My two cents: Grieving Mother would be evil if she didn't show regret for her problematic actions. Aloth might be evil in the future if he continues his problematic actions after learning the full picture -- it would depend on why he continued his problematic actions (if for power, then evil -- if because all the alternatives are worse, then not so much). But, while ignorance may not be a defense in court, honest (not willful!) ignorance is a valid defense to charges of being "evil". Durance is simply confused during the time of the game -- as far as I remember, since his crisis of faith he hasn't lead any purges (or done anything at all, basically) that would be morally suspect in the name of his his goddess. Prior to the game he may well have engaged in some dubious actions on behalf of his deity, but during this time he was a "true believer", and when his faith was shaken he stopped. If, in the future, he performs similar actions knowing what he knows at the end of the game, then arguably he would be evil. Basically, I have a hard time classifying a character that believes his/her actions are wrong (= not justified) and would do something else if the same situation arose again as evil. Note that this refers to honest regret, not "Well, I'm going to say I'm sorry because otherwise I'll get into more trouble" -- villains with good PR are valid, after all. Also, it is OK if the character regrets some evil actions, while considering other actions justified, as long as the "justified" actions are evil.

Dude, I'm, like, saying it right there that I'm not getting into it because of spoilers. You're basically spelling out key parts of the plot in the General Forum. Not cool. Sorry, my apologies -- forgot which forum I was posting in, sorry.

Eeeeh.. I never really felt that at all. But.. I'm not going to get into it, because it's pretty blatant spoiler territory. All I'll say is that by the time I got to Defiance Bay, I no longer had any idea why I was doing this or why I should care. But when it comes to "evil friendly", oh god, Planescape: Torment. That treatment of Dak'kon. Again, the game does a very bad job at reminding you of this, but survival is a good motivation for just about any character type.

I've proposed in the past tracking two relationship variables per companion (instead of one): Respect: This measures the companions belief that the PC is effective -- even if they don't agree with the actual actions the PC performs, they acknowledge that they work at least as well as their preferred actions, and perhaps better. Friendship: This measures how often the PC resolves situations in the same way the companion would resolve them. Respect would be built-up by going against the companion's wishes, and then either producing a positive outcome as measured by the companion's biases, possibly combined with conversations justifying / explaining the motivations behind the action. Respect would go down when the player starts to perform an action, the companion complains, and the player changes the action as a result and when the outcome of the player's actions was evaluated (again, by the companions biases) as inferior. Friendship is simple -- do what the companions prefers and it goes up, do something that opposes these companions wishes and it goes down. If respect is high and friendship is low, then the companion (if resources permit) is ripe for a "crisis of faith", where the conflict between respecting and following the orders of someone who has a clearly different philosophy than the companion is resolved -- either by adjusting the companions philosophy, leaving the party, or similar. Maybe someday...

I dunno talking about Budget where games gets KickStarted i mean KS is nice and such but companies now rely only on KS to get the game done , it used to be on my days that company had to invest their own money into production of the game so they did it as good as they could so they get paid off from selling their game . not this kind of we get 2 Mill we add a castelz we get 3 mill we add a dungeonz we get 1 mill and we pull of an eric cartman to you ... What i mean is after such generous KS , company like Obsidian (oh we know u guys arent broke ok) could invest some more of their own money and deliver perfect game , but now its just u get what u donate for and nothing else . this Risk Free is very bad model of business it is bad for gaming business in general , also you could say that KS brought us alot of games that we wouldnt have seen otherwise but look at Wasteland 2 or Dead State games , they came out unfinished and are still there even after half of year , if company invested their own cash into a game it would come out at much better states then they are now , not even talking about Early Access stuff where you have to be either plain retarded or pay from parents wallet to actually pay for game that is in early Access and most likely will be there for 5 years or so General consensus is that Obsidian did invest some of their own funds in the game -- how much is an open question, but keep in mind that when Obsidian ran the Kickstarter they were broke: if the Kickstarter had failed, it is at least a 50% chance that Obsidian would have closed up shop altogether. Check out part 1 of the "Making of Pillars of Eternity" documentary for more on this background. However, setting that aside: I don't believe that "Oh, it is Kickstarter and that means we shouldn't complain about things" is a valid argument. With any project with any budget, there is a finite amount of resources to be spent, and it is always reasonable to say "They should have spent more on this part, even if that means other components would have suffered." In this case, I'm arguing that if the reason the companions are bland is because of lack of funds then they should have sacrificed elsewhere to spend more resources on the companions. However, I don't believe that the companions are suffering from lack of funds -- Obsidian simply has a very different vision than I do of what makes an interesting companion. Obsidian seems to believe that a companion is interesting / "not bland" if they have lots of things to say (mostly voice acted, to boot) and a significant side quest associated with them. I, on the other hand, feel that a companion should have "lots to say" about the main quest, and their side-quest should benefit the protagonist in some direct, material way (e.g. other than "You get XP").

I tend to believe that this game is about as "evil friendly" as any game can hope to be unless it is built around the "evil protagonist" concept. Overall: 1) The protagonist has a good reason to follow the main quest, regardless of his/her ethics. 2) The antagonist character type is such that it makes sense for him to refuse to even consider allying with the protagonist. 3) Side-quests, in general, don't revolve around the "Oh please, help me"-troope of the IE games -- in the vast majority of the cases the quests are presented as "I don't really expect you to help me, but if you do, I'll give you stuff", and (when the nominal opponents of a side quest are sentient) the player can choose to support either side, with similar rewards in both cases. 4) When truly cruel options are offered to resolve side quests (admittedly rare), the cruel option "performs as expected" -- the player gets a similar reward to the "non-cruel" path, but without jumping through the hoops that the non-cruel path requires. And there is no "karma fairy" that ensures that the player will get his just deserts later -- instead, the game acknowledges the player's cruelty without enforcing negative consequences -- unheard of, in my experience, in games that aren't focused around an evil protagonist. I do agree that the companions are basically "good" for the most part -- if you dig into their background, Aloth and Grieving Mother have done evil in the past (& may do so in the future), but they consider the acts something to hide, rather than something to be proud of, as an "evil" character would. Note that a character may still work to hide their evil acts (even if they are proud of them) to evade consequence -- but when revealed, an evil character would respond with (for example), "Yes, I killed everyone, including the woman and children in the village, but it was the right thing to do, and I'd do it again if the same situation arose". I would like to see some companions along these lines in the expansion, if adding companions is in-scope for the expansion.

Um, you don't have to pull them "into and out of close combat" -- they regain focus just fine from ranged weapons. In fact, one of the suggestions in this thread is to change that, so they must used melee weapons to regain focus (although I think that's massive overkill -- I might go for reducing focus gain when a ranged weapon is used, though).

My two cents: Cyphers should get back half focus only after a rest -- otherwise, one of the two rules would apply: * Their focus only regenerates when they do damage -- no automatic reset to 50%. In exchange, the cap on the amount of focus they could maintain after combat would be eliminated. * Their focus would be capped at 50% when out of combat (same as it is today), but would not be /reset/ to that level if it was less. The first is obviously more favorable to the cypher, but both have the desired effect of discouraging cypher spell use in routine combat encounters. On the other hand, I'm not certain what the problem is if the cypher uses his abilities in encounters that the party would likely win /anyway/, but if this is a problem that needs to be addressed then one of the two above solutions would seem to be the way to go. Forcing the cypher to start with zero focus, on the other hand, turn the class into an inferior copy of the chanter, and that' doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Coup de Grace only applies to creatures with, I believe, 5 HD less than you, requires a full round action, and provokes an attack of opportunity, so it isn't that powerful... NWN 1 & 2 were the only D&D CRPGs that implemented this (Temple of Elemental Evil likely did as well, now that I think of it). But, yeah, hold person and similar spells in D&D CRPGs are effectively save or die (that's why I included them on the list), because the duration is long enough that you will most certainly be killed prior to them wearing off naturally.

To interject with my POV -- which seems to align fairly closely with Chirstliar's POV: I concede that the characters are well written, both on a purely technical level (grammar and the like) and in terms of having a well defined quest that was utilized both to improve their characterization and provide a useful mechanism for providing the player with lore information that would be difficult to convey to the player in another way. None of the above detracts from the fact that I didn't react either positively or negatively to most of the companions -- I found them terminally uninteresting. I found them so uninteresting that if I restart the game, I may ignore the companions altogether (& go with adventurer hall companions), simply because I consider the companions story to be so uninteresting that I might as well use companions without any story. I've never, ever, in my 20+ years of gaming made a statement like the above in any party based RPG that included built-in companions. That includes NWN 1 (which had companions with almost no content at all). It isn't that I've never disliked companions -- I absolutely loath Jan's character in BG2, and never include him in my party, for example -- but I've never had a complete absence of emotional response to all of the companions in one game. In my book, that makes companions a failure -- even if they do (and I concede that they do) have well written back stories and so forth.

My two cents -- I found none of the companions story really all that engaging (GM was the most engaging, but that's not saying much). I really don't think that you are missing out on anything significant if you just generate your own party.

Those characters (more precisely, the story that you see when you click on them and then "examine their soul") were created by backers who backed at the $500+ (or maybe higher -- I can't find the award on the Kickstarter page) level. Thus, the story is 100% unrelated to the content in the game -- you miss out on absolutely nothing if you don't read them. Of course, you'll make the backers who made the game sad if you don't read their stories, and they made the game possible, so YMMV. The same applies to the gravestones that you'll see later in the game -- both the names and text were created by backers and have zero gameplay implications.

I'm assuming that this is sarcasm, because... Yeah, there were lots of effects like these in the IE games (hold person = paralyze, basilisks for petrify, mind flayers for domination, and so forth). Many of these effects were instant death -- some allowed for the possibility of another character rescuing the first. The difference is that in the IE games there existed hard counters to each of these abilities (free action counters hold person and a host of similar effects absolutely, potion of mirrored eyes counters petrification, chaotic commands counters domination, etc.). If you had (and knew to use) the hard counter, the encounter was trivial -- if you did not, then it was time to reload. In PoE, the explicit design intent was to remove hard counters (& abilities that require hard counters) and this vision was implemented by converting all effects into (fairly short) durations -- in IE, petrify is permanent, while in PoE is is simply a longer lasting version of paralyze. Conceptually, this means that the player can survive any effect by simply "waiting it out". How well this works in practice... Well, see this thread (and others like it). But that's why you won't see spells or effects that provide immunity to specific status effects in PoE, and I really doubt that they will ever be created.

Agreed -- the world-building in PoE is heads and shoulders above anything that Bioware has done in any of the Dragon Age games. It is also irrelevant to the questions of "Was I engaged by the game?" or "Is the game bland?" After all, real world history has a better back story / consistency, and depth than any piece of fiction ever written -- that doesn't mean that everyone would categorize world history as "engaging" or "not bland". The two are totally unrelated. To give another example: Portal 1 / Portal 2 (to take an obvious example) has the most superficial excuse for a storyline that could be imagined -- there is zero depth, little in the way of consistency, and certainly doesn't have a through backstory -- but is widely regarded as being a highly engaging game due to the story. In fact, I watched (because I wouldn't enjoy the mechanics at all) both games and regard these games as being among the most engaging stories that I've seen in any video game. Now you may disagree -- personal tastes differ, after all -- but surely you can conceed that a game can be bland / unengaging irregardless of whether or not it has a rich backstory / complex characters / and the like. And, for the record, I think that PoE has too much (way, way) voice acting -- I would much prefer to see the amount of voice acting reduced by 50-75% and the funds applied to adding additional reactivity in the existing conversations.