Sensuki

Torment will be interesting as it will be mostly a narrative focused game. They just hired a Codexian Adventure game developer as a contract writer, so hopefully there's puzzle gameplay in there too. I'll probably focus mostly on polish, UI, performance and maybe with the encounter design. Adam Heine is the Lead Designer and he seems pretty cool. He talked recently on the Codex about using some UI features similar to the Banner Saga, which I like because the Banner Saga has good tactical combat and has a good UI.

I am a member of the codex and I like Real-time with pause, action combat AND turn-based. If you can do good combat of any type - that's cool with me [and no, Pillars of Eternity is not good real-time with pause]

I'll be doing testing for Torment in a similar manner I think. Will probably see some of you around for that. What if you're not having fun and are trying to figure out why?

Excuse me, but I am right here thankyou very much. I replied to Matt's post and I've replied to several others. Matt is a friend of mine so naturally I'm not going to kick up a stink over him disagreeing with me on a forum . This forum and many of the other forums on the game move at an incredibly fast pace and it's impossible to keep up with all of them. I mostly stick to the Codex Pillars of Eternity stuff now because I like reading the Codex. I posted the Codex review here because no one else had yet. I have also posted other Codex content here before such as the Shadowrun Hong Kong stuff / Codex Top RPGs in GD and various other things. If the Vault Dwelller and Grunker review was posted first I would have posted that instead (which likely is going to be a positive review). I also informed others of that review upcoming. Other than post about my disappointment with the game (usually when asked directly), yes I have stopped contributing and producing video content because ... I don't like the game and I believe that I can do nothing further to make the game enjoyable for me to play. My issues with the game are at the design level, not the implementation level. They cannot be fixed. There is a group of people that enjoy the game - largely the game's 'target audience' - badgame and Something Awful. You don't see me going on a rampage about it. I post on the Codex, which I consider my home forum and I have posted a few times on reddit, here and Something Awful, almost always when someone asks me a question or to respond to a personal query. You may be disappointed that I have stopped contributing but I was bitterly disappointed with the game after the amount of money and effort I spent on it only to not really enjoy playing it, not even enough to want to finish it. The best thing for me to do is just simply stay the hell away. And just because I posted a meme about "just wanting to read the comments", does that make me a troll? The review post has generated nearly 30 pages of discussion and debate. Discussion and debate in my opinion is healthy. Do you see me rebutting every person who disagrees with me or the review? No. Only specific posts, like the guy who said BG1 is a terrible game.

Evidently.

Where did I say that problems are not as big of a deal as he makes them out to be? and which ones? I can tell you, I am more disappointed with this game than the reviewer Darth Roxor is simply by matter of return on investment.

No it's not. I dislike Pillars of Eternity but I wouldn't call it an epic disaster of a game. But I'm not surprised that you think that BG1 is because you love the Engagement system There are quite a few people that enjoy rolling for stats. The design for the game was to emulate AD&D 2E. In AD&D 2E you rolled for stats. Goal succeeded. Is it? Would you say that the Gold Box games have a byzantine and cumbersome class system? Because the class system was AD&D 2E. There were a fair few things missing though which the IWDs and BG2 fixed. The rules were not hidden if you knew AD&D 2E. Once again, your problem appears to be with the AD&D 2E ruleset itself. Yes you can. However, not everyone cares about this. Josh Sawyer might be on a holy crusade to try and remove trap choices as options in games but not everyone cares to. The only trap choices to be made are in attribute selection, really. The tutorial is optional, and you don't have to speak to the Green Tutorial Monks either. I never do. When I play Candlekeep I kill Shank and Carbos, return Phyldia's book. Loot the second floor of the Inn. Get the potion for Nessie the Cow. Fight Jondalar and Erik. Kill the Rats for Reevor. Return Tethtoril's scroll. Fetch Hull's Long Sword and buy Fuller his bolts. All of that makes sense to me, you seem like some sort of Candlekeep Errand Boy/Girl before you leave. Really? The first area includes bears, and you can kill them straight off the bat. You likely can't beat a Bear in Pillars of Eternity with two level one characters with starting gear only. Yes, until you find the Ring of Wizardry (or Ring of Holiness) And no, you do not have to take lots of naps. Who says you have to rest when you run out of spells? I never do. Is this what makes people rest spam? I use my spells wisely and the rest of the time I attack with weapons. Up in ya grill with my 19 Thaco Quarterstaff attacks or in the back with a Sling. Sling Wizard isn't terrible, either. Umm, you can do this in Pillars of Eternity? You're not even interrupted if you rest 20 feet away from some Ogres as long as you're not in the combat state. No you won't. Don't pick up every crappy item. Pick up the good stuff. Searching for what point? and yeah maybe you don't care about an Iron Shortage, but don't you want to find out why someone has put a bounty on your head? I had more personal motivation in Baldur's Gate 1 and more sense of adventure than I did in Pillars of Eternity.

I think he meant it's a mediocre Infinity Engine game when compared to Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment.

BG1 is not an Obsidian game. It was made by BioWare. I'm positive that the reviewer likes BG1 more than DS3.

Dude I've read every post he's made about the game on the codex. You are misinterpreting him . He knows that they were deliberately trying to copy D&D. I repeatedly stated that he was comparing it against Obsidian's other games. You asked me to make a comparison against another Kickstarter which I did and I stated why I thought the plot in SRR was better than the Pillars of Eternity plot. Obsidian's writers might have a larger vocabulary and more flowery ways of saying things but that doesn't really mean much when the actual content has issues. In my post earlier I linked you to a thread where the Codex discusses the issues with the writing in Pillars of Eternity at extreme length. It's a really good thread and I enjoyed reading it. Every issue I have mentioned is in there, mentioned by others. Here is the thread again: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-writing-in-this-game-is-average.98103/ Personally I think that it's a very polished game but content wise I think it's a big disappointment. The biggest achievement in the game is the environment art. Everything else they've done somewhere better before. For some people, polish is more important but I don't think that Pillars of Eternity will rank that great on the Codex Top RPG list this year. It will be interesting to see how it does against D:OS, SRD and Wasteland 2 though.

It was unfinished yep, and yes the mechanics were less complex. Complex =/= good and despite the combat being super easy I was not bothered by it. In Pillars of Eternity it's just a boring repetitive slog. I prefer the KotOR2 characters, story and Chris Avellone's writing in general I think. I also finished the game multiple times. So there's that. MotB probably is better, but it uses the NWN2 engine and that game has terrible performance. I can't play games that have terrible performance.

You said this in your first paragraph of your last post Your key mistake here is that you think the reviewer thinks that what Obsidian created is 'to be as different as possible from D&D' when he is actually saying it's trying to be 'not-D&D', which is basically D&D stuff with slight variations. He criticizes them for being unoriginal/boring. Part of Obsidian's goal was to make the game feel a bit like Forgotten Realms / D&D and this is what they did to an extent, but the reviewer wanted them to take more risks, to be a bit more inventive. The exact opposite of what you said. The reviewer compares the writing against Obsidian's other games and not the other Kickstarters, but I'll humor you. There are many aspects of writing and I think Obsidian's writing is nicely written but in Pillars of Eternity specifically the plot is weak, has structural and pacing issues as well as issues with establishing player motivation, and then goes full retard in the last part of the game (which he mentions, where they throw everything including the kitchen sink at you in the last bit of the game). Nothing in the game me even remotely care about the Dyrwood or the antagonist to the point where I stopped playing the game because I simply did not care to pursue the story any further after the Act 2 finale. I have completed Shadowrun Returns (and none of the other KS games) and while Obsidian can write nicer sentences, I thought Shadowrun Returns had a better plot - started out investigating a murder and then evolved into a save the world story, simple, perhaps a bit cliche, but it worked without issue. Obsidian reached for the sky and fell short with theirs. There were several things I didn't like in SRR such as the murderer showing up at the crime scene (derp) and I didn't even like the second part of the story but there was nothing wrong with the plot and I liked the characters, particularly Coyote. Apparently Dragonfall is way, way better. I recently bought that but I've only played the first 10 minutes. I'll take a simpler plot/story that succeeds than one that is underdeveloped/a mess. IMO the most interesting story tidbit was the Hollowborn stuff, I would have rathered if the game was just about that. So did many others, I'm sure. It's not difficult to separate combat from story either. Combat in The Witcher 2 sucks, but the story is quite good and I've enjoyed replaying that a few times and the Rise of the Sword mod makes the combat less insufferable. I've only completed one Obsidian game - Knights of the Old Republic 2. I played Neverwinter Nights 2 but never finished it (and likely never will). I refuse to play Alpha Protocol, South Park and Fallout New Vegas because AP is a console shooter, I don't care about South Park and I don't like any Bethesda games (including Morrowind) and I only mildly enjoyed the first Dungeon Siege but do not care to play the second or third. None of those games cater to my gameplay preferences. Out of the games I have played (Kotor 2), NWN2 and Pillars of Eternity I'd say it's worse than KotOR2, but maybe better than NWN2 at least in some ways, but worse in others.

I'm sorry but I have absolutely no idea how you got this from the review because it doesn't say anything of the sort. He used the word not-D&D. You've heard of "I can't believe it's not butter" right ? That pretty much invalidates everything in your first paragraph. I doubt it, because I was determined to enjoy the game, and I came roughly to the same conclusions. I had the same opinion as Darth Roxor did that even if the combat wasn't very good that at least the writing/story would be good, because it's Obsidian right? This is their forte. It turned out to be exactly as he said - average at best. I wouldn't go as far to say abysmal at worst but there are areas where it clearly struggles. The plot and player motivation is a mess and the game clearly suffers from trying to cover too much ground while not really doing any of it's themes justice at all. This thread basically covers everything and includes several posts from the author: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-writing-in-this-game-is-average.98103/ I'm not sure how you got "clear preference for action games" from this. I think it's pretty clear that the game burnt the reviewer. He was expecting an Infinity Engine successor that at least had a decent Obsidian story. What he got was a game that he didn't find fun to play and didn't have a good story. Whereas Dungeon Siege 3 probably at least met or surpassed his expectations.

I'll be selling mine as soon as I get the DRM-free disc, everything still sealed

Perhaps if you pay Darth Roxor some money he might change his review to a positive one like what happens in professional games journalism

I was actually referring to people that commented specifically on the article on the website. I stated "most commented article on codex ever" (in as many hours) and Shevek responded with how many of those people read the article.

Like with everything in the KS, they were most concerned with delivering the promised features e.g. "15 levels" than anything else. Other developers cut features to much jeering from their respective communities. The result is butter scraped over too much bread.

Everyone except you and Irenaeus probably.

I dunno, this one has the most comments of any Codex review ever

I know, I've read his reviews. I personally think he's gotten a little bit softer. His WL2 review was very forgiving (still a fairly good review though). I still think it will be a good review even if I know I'm going to disagree with a lot of the things they say, I'm more interested in seeing what Grunker and VD agree on. VD is basically the opposite of me when it comes to the Infinity Engine games.

Vault Dweller and Grunker's review will be more positive. Vault Dweller hates Baldur's Gate and RTwP combat and his main priorities are C&C and reactivity, so as far as he's concerned pretty much anything is better than the BG games. He's also a developer so he's kinda bound by 'professional courtesy' as well. Grunker is a BG2 guy and I think he enjoyed the game but he thought that encounter design and itemization were absolutely terrible among other things.

I agree with most of the points/conlusions that Darth Roxor makes, but as I said in the OP I agree with them for sometimes completely different reasons. He does get some mechanical details wrong and I disagree with many of the things he says, but he winds up largely at the same conclusion as I do. It's definitely not a troll review. The tone of the review is colorfully antagonistic, but I don't have a problem with that, and all of his reviews are like that although not all of them are negative.

RPGCodex just released their first review (there will be another one) http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9867 This is my favourite review so far. I agree with most, if not all points/conclusions although often for (sometimes very) different reasons than the reviewer stated. There will also be another review later on by Grunker and Vault Dweller.

I would have dropped the infinite inventory too, but they were absolutely never going to do that unfortunately. When would you reset the vendor gold? All the vendor gold limit does is force you to go to a different store, it doesn't really add anything to the gameplay.

I'd like to see you come up with a solution that doesn't suck. The gold limit was there for some other reason/to fit some other mechanic which they removed from the game during production or the alpha or something so all it was doing was making you walk outside and back in again to sell gear. Even if the gold limit prevented you from selling stuff to the same vendor, how exactly is it fun gameplay to have to walk around the world map to different vendors selling your gear? I also did not get vendor gold removed. I posted about it being crap, sure, but someone else posted it somewhere (Something Awful?) and Josh Sawyer replied with that it was supposed to be removed anyway because they changed the system, it just hadn't been removed yet. In the IE games, certain vendors wouldn't buy certain things, but there was no gold limit. They could have done something like that I guess, although PE doesn't have that many shops in areas (usually less than one) so it would just mean extra traveling. As far as "QQ I'm triggered by Sensuki, he made the game worse" goes, most of the stuff that I got changed was quite minor (mostly minor UI stuff). Any major changes had absolutely nothing to do with me other than probably fanning the flames of discussion.