eselle28
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Posts posted by eselle28
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Sure. Part of NPCs being reactive means that they should have breaking points. I can imagine that out of eight people, there might be someone who's strongly devoted to the PC or maybe just a bit of a doormat. There might be someone else who's focused enough on a larger goal (whether it be some sort of cause or just a desire to be with a profitable adventuring company) to put up with a party leader who treats them badly or who regularly does things they find disagreeable. But that leaves six people, and I think they should have some sticking points that would make them leave the party. Whether that means a quiet exit, a battle to the death, or a sneaky betrayal should depend on the character's personality.
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I'm going to vote for the middle path. Like lots of others, I really enjoyed the feeling of traveling in BG1. There was lots of tense tiptoeing around, hoping I wouldn't bump into anything nasty until I found a safe place for my party to rest, which made it feel like a real adventure rather than a game. On the other hand, there were also some times in the game when I was listlessly wandering around searching for anything more entertaining than a routine fight with mundane enemies who dropped mostly useless items. I'd ideally like something with the adventuring feel, but that had quest-rich areas spaced throughout the game rather than concentrated at the end. It seems like PE, which has two big cities, a megadungeon, and presumably some villages and small dungeons and ruins, should be able to do this while still having some of the wild areas be quite wild and unpopulated.
Oh, and I'm firmly opposed to the idea of limiting the quest log to five quests. An MMO that I otherwise enjoy does this, and I don't care for it at all. What it means in practice is that the player needs to do a lot of dull backtracking to pick up quests they didn't have room for the first time around. I don't see the point of that in a single player game. Additionally, in a game that doesn't have huge question marks over people's heads, I suspect what would happen is that players would start keeping notes now and then to remember which quests they'd skipped until someone finally made a mod to remove the quest restriction.
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Besides, having an "old flame" essentialy means that my character loves someone and I have absolutely no idea why. I don't even know the person! If I end up hating them and the game insists on telling me that my character loves them (or even used to love), I'll be angry. This can work in a game with a pre-defined protagonist, but not in one with customized character creation.
Yes, nobody ever, ever comes to hate somebody they once loved. That's why divorce rates are so low.
The game is still assuming that I once liked that sort of person. It's also assuming that my character isn't a young person who's never been in love or a celibate member of some religious group. And unless the scripting gets very involved, it's going to run into awkward territory. Will there be a love interest of both genders? Will the game accomodate players who design characters who aren't interested in the opposite sex?
There are so many cool stories to tell. For me, this one isn't woth making so many decisions for players.
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I don't expect to use the Adventurer's Hall. Icewind Dale is just not my style of game, and one of the reasons I like isometric RPGs is that they allow for big parties and more companion interaction.
There are eight companions. I expect I'll like enough of them for two playthroughs, and since I finish games at a glacial rate, there will probably be some mod-created companions available by the time I've done that.
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I'm not a fan. I suppose it's fine enough when looting Kobold #1 or Barrel #2, and I also don't mind there being some random chance of being attacked by bandits if I choose a foolish place to rest. But I don't want random quest placement, because I've never seen that accomplished without having to remove the context that make a quest interesting. Likewise, I think that companions should either all be hanging out at the same tavern for quick and easy party building, or alternately (and preferably) placed around the world in locations that make sense for their characters.
I do value replayability, but for me that comes more from different options that can be pursued the second time around and from having some scripted encounters hidden in odd, out of the way corners of the world.
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I believe PE will have options somewhere in between limited and broad. Given the limited voice acting and the isometic camera it would be less work to create unique content based on the PC's personal history.
I believe the developers have said that the PE player character is just a victim of circumstance, and that they won't be dictating the player's background.
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Blank slate, please. I've played one too many games that saddled me with relatives and mentors. A premade, interactive family just doesn't mesh well with the archetype of a misanthropic hermit or a rambler who never stays in one place for a long time. It's also tricky if I don't like the assigned loved ones but am playing a character who's unlikely to be rude or cruel to others - "polite but distant" or "only sees family at biannual holiday celebration" generally aren't among the dialogue options.
I used to be fairly tolerant of the young orphan background as long as it let me shed my guardian fairly quickly. That does at least give the excuse that my character hasn't picked up an unusual lifestyle becaues she hasn't had the chance to yet. As I've gotten a little older, I've become less patient with it, though. The young orphan setting out on an adventure might be an old and useful trope, but at some point I've started to prefer to play characters who are closer to my own age. I don't really remember being 20 that well anymore, and I'm not sure I want to.
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I'm mildly pro-romance (less intrusive BGII-style ones, not overblown DA2 ones), but a player family just seems like it's a step in the wrong direction. I'm not going to make the resources argument. We all have features beyond the barebones RPG experience that we want, and I think we all have our reasons for why the ones we like should be included instead of the ones we'd just ignore or skip over.
A somewhat different objection I have is that having a player family takes the emphasis off of adventuring and the main storyline. I'm not under the impression that this is meant to be a home base centered RPG like DA2 was or a very unstructured open world like Skyrim. If the plot of the game puts the player on a quest that's intended to be finished within a year or two maximum, there doesn't seem to be time to form any kind of an appropriate family. I'm picturing the house more as a storage and meeting place and the stronghold as something with military value, and the player family idea doesn't seem to fit well with that. It's not an idea I dislike in all games, but it doens't seem like it's the best fit for one with the structure that's been proposed.
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I'm sure they'll provide support and patching. They already have an expansion in the works, and from what it sounds like, they're hoping to turn this into a franchise and make other games in this setting. Do you think they're foolish enough to risk the goodwill they've earned with their Kickstarter by releasing a product and then not fixing criticalbugs? This is the sort of niche product where fan happiness and word of mouth are crucial, and there's no third party to point fingers at. I'm pretty confident they'll do right by their customers.
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I used to be in favor of all companions gaining equal experience, but I've gotten increasingly tired of the holding tank mentality. There was something to be said for the BG/BGII experience where I might be able to have someone tag along for a quest, but had to have pretty firm ideas about who was in my regular party. I think it made me a little more invested in those characters, and it certainly made it easier to be cruel to or kill characters who my character didn't like much. (And I don't even think of refraining from doing so as powergaming. If it's possible to take people along, let them cool their heels for the whole game, and then whip them out in one battle at the end where they seem like they'll be useful, a cautious or tactically minded character would want to take along everyone who wasn't going to be a burden or a troublemaker.)
That being said, if a game doesn't give out of party companions experience, it needs to make them all available relatively close to the beginning of the game.
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Well sure if we take it to an extreme conclusion, but that is not even relevent here since P:E already has a selection of playable races. I was saying something more like 'give us a limited choice of races but make that choice have a significant impact'.
My point is that if you keep saying fewer is okay it may get to such an extreme conclusion with time (after all DA: O had 3 races, a lot less than the D&D games that came before it, and then DA2 had 1). I'm not saying we should have so many choices for races that we have to scroll for hours to get through them all, just that more choice isn't always a bad thing. MotB had quite a number of races and subraces to choose from and it was a great game. And of course I'm pushing for half-breeds because I like playing them myself and we've already got the standard humans, elves, dwarves, gnome-inspired, orc-inspired and even the equivalent of planetouched as a subrace. So why not half-breeds as a subrace too.
As I've said, half-breeds wouldn't necessarily count as an entirely different race but could be a subrace. Using half-elves as an example, I think in some settings I've seen it mentioned that to a human a half-elf looks like an elf, whereas to an elf a half-elf looks like a human unless they're quite familiar with the other races features and can recognize that it isn't your typical elf/human. So it doesn't have to mean that every person the player comes across will scream 'Oh no! You're a half-breed!' (you could cut down on specific dialogue for the subrace this way). Only those that can spot what they are.
Though of course I would like to see half-breeds implemented with some sort of prejudice (or perhaps the equivalent to a charisma penalty? Since both races that the half-breed is part of may find the mixed appearance unsettling if they don't assume they're the other race. And there's the possibility of them not quite turning out right, I don't imagine all half-breeds would strike a pleasant middle between their two races) as you don't really see this in the IE games when playing as a half-elf. I can't recall if half-orcs had much dialogue specific to them. And maybe half-breeds would get different reactions depending on where they were. As someone mentioned in the region that has a mix of human and elves half-elves probably wouldn't be frowned upon.
I'm certainly not going to quibble with having variety, and I also don't have any strong objection to half elves in environments where there are already elves. I've played half elves everal times in other games.
To the extent I'm glad PE is going in a different direction, it's because the developers have specified that they're only going to be including 6 races. Including half elves means that one of dwarves, orlans, aumaua or godlike would need to be left out. I wouldn't mind losing dwarves (or for that matter, both elves and half elves), but I think it would be a bit of a missed opportunity if the game cut one of the races that had a little less baggage and that left a little more room for the developers to do something completely new.
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This seems like something that would work well with the difficulty settings. When playing on easy, there are a decent number of doors or portals available. If you want to play as an Expert, you find that the portals are no longer there or the doors are sealed off.
I don't want to be forced to do a 30+ hour sidequest in a row without break just because I chose "expert"...
Oh, I can certainly understand that. But it is just a difficulty mode. If it's really too much, you can just turn it down to easy when you approach one of the usual exit points and decide you've had enough of this for awhile.
(And, yeah, I realize that's not perfect either because people feel a little uncomfortable briefly changing their difficulty settings to get around annoying issues. It just seems like a somewhat workable compromise between people who really want the options to be locked in a dungeon and those who want the ability to leave if it gets too dull, depressing or hard. I'm personally in the second group.)
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I wouldn't it mind that being a trigger for characters who joined the party as mercenaries and who had assertive personalities, but that's not an appropriate response for all companions. Just using some BGII personalities, a Keldorn type who joined the quest because he thought it was the right thing to do would likely be too honorable to demand money from or attack someone who decided he wasn't the best man for the job. A weak character like Aerie would be more likely to cry. Someone like Nalia might be perfectly happy to leave as long as her own quest had been taken care of. As most characters in a party generally aren't there for pure profit, I don't think it's likely to be a common response.
As for a town's response, there are no lawful/chaotic divisions in the game. As the encounter would look like one of your companions attacking you, I think many towns might look the other way unless it was someone who was of their race or culture attacking and being killed by a bunch of outsiders.
(All that applies to gold and treasure. As far as experience goes, your companion leveled up by being with you. I'm not sure what justification there would be for one taking some allocated to the player character or the ones who weren't kicked from the party.)
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For me it comes down to choice and variety. I expect to be able to play a female character without dressing her in extremely revealing armor. I'm fine if some items of that type exist, since I recognize many players enjoy them, but I expect there to be stat and level appropriate alternatives. NPC #2 might enjoy using nudity as a distraction, but that doesn't mean my character does.
When it comes to other in game characters, I'm ok with some revealing outfits, even in situations where they don't seem very realistic. All I'd ask is that there be a variety of portrayals and that the game also contain female characters who do not dress that way, as well as some who are not beautiful or young. It would be nice but not mandatory if the game attempted to apply some logic to the situation (dancers are scantily dressed but farmers are not, cultures where the women are mostly nude also have men wearing little clothing, a knight of either gender who went into battle undressed is seen as mentally unbalanced, and so on).
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I don't mind inequality in particular quests as long as things average out roughly the same over an entire area, or an entire act.
There will always be people who powergame at every opportunity, and if someone wants to play with a guide that tells them which response yields the most experience, so be it. If they're bored by the end of the game because they've bought everything that's for sale and all of the fights seem easy, that's the result of their choices.
My main concern is making sure that people who pick what appear to be reasonable character archetypes (the physically strong but low intelligence fighter, the charmer who hates fighting and tries to talk his way out of trouble whenever possible) don't end up in situations where they have too little experience to successfully complete quests and either need to start over or to grind. To the extent the game makes sure that doesn't happen, I don't think every choice needs to end up with exactly the same experience or gold reward.
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The third option sounds right to me. I do like being able to loot weapons and armor from my foes. It's especially rewarding to get my first set of decent gear at the beginning of the game, and to loot awesome, powerful pieces from tough enemies toward the end of the game. But that feels the most meaningful if the drops are connected to the enemy. If I kill the Black Knight of Doom, I want to be able to get some black armor or a doomsword or something of that sort. If I kill a basilisk, I'd rather it drop some sort of scale or hide that could be used for crafting.
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just out of curiosity, what if they were variable in how they played out?I don't want repeatable quests in the game. If you do the same thing over and over again it just becomes meaningless filler, especially when you've attempted the quest before and now know exactly how to approach it again for an easy victory.
That would make it worse, in my book, because then I might feel like I need to do the boring repeatable content to avoid being underleveled. I'd rather the game encourage me to go new places, talk to new people, and learn new things. Even without monster XP, it could still do that with exploration or conversation XP, and I find that to be substantially more interesting.
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if they make indeed BG style portraits for the game, i hope they make many and most importantly many that are not used for npc's. i really did not like the fact in BG that all the portraits you could choose from, were used for some npc and he would get another portrait if you had used his as yours. they should have an selection of portraits npcs do not use, from which to choose your character's
Given that there are only 8 companions and that one of the backer rewards was being able to include a portrait in the game, I think it's safe to say that there will be non-NPC portraits available. There aren't many times that I criticize BG or BGII, but this will be one of them: that was a terrible design decision and made me really annoyed until I figured out how to import third party portraits.
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I'm curious how the ceremonial marriage idea works. Does the couple in question decide not to have children, or is there an arrangement where one or both has a child with someone from their own species and then they raise it together? Or perhaps there's some form of group marriage, two elves and two humans?
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I enjoy some fetch quests, especially when they're used as ways to point me toward other content. I'm up for some amount of exploration, but I don't want to have to stumble over everything by accident. Sometimes wandering in the wilderness gets old and I'd like to head over to the nearest village or dungeon.
Aside from accidental discovery, the other way games seem to point players to content is "go talk to..." quests. Those have their place, but only if my contact actually has anything interesting to say. If all I'm going to get is, "Hey, why don't you help out the villagers around here?" I'd prefer to be sent to the village to retreive an item and then just notice all those people in need of help while I'm looking for it. It feels a little more organic.
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I don't think that rape should be entirely removed from a game because some people may be sensitive to it, and I think there's a place for depictions of it in games.
But I don't want the experience of my character being raped to be a necessary consequence of selecting "female" in the character creation screen. That's wrenching a huge bit of character development out of my hands, and it's doing so in one of the most unpleasant ways possible. It may add realism to the game, but in my opinion, it doesn't add fun to it. All it does is take away my opportunity to have a bit of a power fantasy in my game, at least unless I resign myself to playing a gender other than my own.
I"m particularly opposed to making things specifically unpleasant for female characters because these sorts of changes make the game far less accessible for people who always play them or who would play them on their first playthrough, and it seems as if many realism advocates want these sorts of options for later playthroughs when they've become bored with other content in the game.
The PC should not be raped, not sure where anybody got that idea from. I don't think anybody wants the PC raped. Nor do I think having a companion be raped either (although, I do think if I am evil I should be able to sell of my companion to slaver or sacrifice them to dark being, or use them in a ritual to give myself immortality..etc)
However, I am for having gender references and characters being treated discriminatory or bonuses based on your gender and race in different situations.
There are people who are in favor of that. I'm a little more neutral on the subject of companions and rape. I'm not generally a fan of rape being used as a shorthand method of character development, but I can imagine some situations where it could be written in an appropriate and thoughtful way. As for encountering rape in the world or in the course of questing, I was expecting that the subject would be addressed at some point. It's certainly been included in other games.
As for gender discrimination, I don't have a problem with some of the societies in the world being biased and treating my character differently based on gender or race. I would not, however, be very interested in a "realistic" world where all of the cultures thought it odd or immoral for a woman to be an adventurer and where almost every NPC I interacted with commented negatively on my character's gender. Aside from being a little depressing, I think it would quickly get very one-note and annoying. The occasional bonus or additional conversation option based on race or gender or class is a good thing (and wouldn't always have to be sexual or based on prejudice...I can easily imagine a character reminding an NPC of a son or daughter, and receiving more lenient treatment because of that).
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I do hope they leave spiders out or make them only a minor part of the game, but that's primarily because I think they're terribly dull and overused as stock enemies. I would hope that Project: Eternity would use something a little more unique and specific to its setting.
In that same vein, while dragons are quite interesting from a combat perspective, they're also overused to the point of losing some of their power to awe. It would be nice if they were in the game, but used sparingly and in little hidden corners of the world, and if some other kind of mythological creature was more prominent.
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This seems like something that would work well with the difficulty settings. When playing on easy, there are a decent number of doors or portals available. If you want to play as an Expert, you find that the portals are no longer there or the doors are sealed off.
I think that could end up working for players who want the challenge of managing their resources and trying to rest in a dangerous dungeon, without making things too punishing on new players who unwisely venture into an area their party isn't strong enough or well-equipped enough to manage.
I'm definitely not a fan of the idea of a level-scaled dungeon where players clear a few levels early on, level up a bit, return for a few more levels, and so on. That ends up seeming more like a chore than anything else, and it kind of takes away from the dungeon's hugeness if you're only meant to do small bits of it at one time. I'd rather see it be an all at once dungeon done when the player is in the medium-high levels of the game.
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I'm kind of a masochist. I actually like the early stages of a game when I have no or very close to no equipment and need to scrounge around in some barrels or kill a couple of guards with a pocketknife.
Irreconcilable Companion Differences
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
I'm very much in favor of things like this. I suspect there won't be quite as many incompatible companions given the small overall number of them, but I think a handful of quarreling pairs would add both realism and a more spontaneous feel to the game. I do agree that the player character should be able to smooth over conflicts...as long as it's not done by including some kind of Easy Mode persuade option like in Mass Effect 2. If there's going to be smoothing over, I think it should be done by the player character choosing dialogue options and having to figure out the best way to handle the situation given the personalities involved.
As for having unpleasant arguments happen in dungeons, I don't think that's likely to happen. Even with the BG games, there were mods to change the triggers on certain dialogues so that they didn't happen in ridiculous places. I'm sure that regardless of the dialogue system, it will be designed to avoid these sorts of problems.