Caerdon
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Posts posted by Caerdon
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This is honestly the sloppiest I have seen both a developer and a distributor handle a game.
There is no installation instructions. No information or official comments. We have 2 patches which makes no sense. Never before whether I had a expansion or not did I have to install 2 patches.
Uh... is this the first game you've ever played? Because I've seen much, much worse - and more times than I have appendages to count them with.
Which leads to the crux of my problem with joining the Galaxy or Steam or others. I want to control where I install my game. I want to know what is coming and where its going. I want to be able to modify as I wish certain settings and different aspects for the game to be as I want it to be. We are basically leasing games today. It is just a loose form of it and these types of systems are only exacerbating certain problems.
None of that applies to Galaxy. You decide where to install the games. You decide whether to auto-update or download patches of your own choosing manually. And you own the games you buy - you can download installers and make backup copies, for example.
You can use Galaxy purely as a download manager or a patching tool. But clearly that's not good enough for you, because you hate it on principle.
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The problem with GoG Galaxy is that it wanted to download like 5.7 GB for the patching while the manual patches were like 100 MB and 200 MB. Or at least it was for me. If you are anywhere that bandwidth speed or volume downloaded is an issue it makes a huge difference.
That's certainly true and something that should be fixed. CDPR seems to have some pretty good programmers, one might think they'd be able to handle binary deltas.
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GOG Galaxy handles updates just fine. I don't miss the days when I had to find, download and install patches manually.
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The OP is a bit comical.
Then all the people defending Obsidian about their budget which is 2x more than Larian D:OS is also comical.
Then there is the whole generational comments about wanting everything handed to us (again comical)
OP it would of been better to actual (if your not just trolling) to post a statement of what you are having issues with so perhaps people could help you or you could send it to the tech forum and they could work on resolving the issue. I do not even know what the hell the OP is saying to be honest.
The game should continue to updated and there are definitely some bugs that seem strange that they passed through even a modicum of testing.
But we also know they are likely pushing away at the next expansion and whoever prioritizes things in a company is going to put the priority on what can make money in the future.
Patching bugs makes them no money. Unless you look at it from the loyal fan base. I am in no way justifying this.
Truth is the system for making games is absurdly broken from the top down. Luckily we have kickstarters today so companies have more leeway to create something that is not fully controlled by a producer rather than a creator.
Regardless we should hold a flame to them in some way to make sure they don't just dump games on us with no support.
On the other hand I think it is good to look at the overall picture here and to understand that they are likely busted their ass on multiple levels to get things through QA and to be doing the next expansion.
Of course they did raise 4 million which like I said is 4x more than D:OS and 2x more than what D:OS 2 got so they have enough money. But there are people inside Obsidian that have a much higher pay from their length of experience in the industry likely.
I just wish all Games today were built more openly to allow for community fixes or they utilized the community in a organized manner to help test and resolve bugs.
Random bitch fests and back and forth nonsense never really gets the attention of anyone who matters. A logical person would look at this post and just say I guess the OP is having a bad day today.
People that don't check their facts and think D:OS had a smaller budget than PoE are also comical...
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Sounds good to me.
I never liked how an entire spell level suddenly changes from 4/rest to 4/encounter, that's just too much of a leap. I would've just made the change gradual, i.e. 4/R > 1/E + 3/R > 2/E + 2/R > 3/E + 1/R > 4/E.
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I'd LOVE that. The SSI Gold Box games were my first adventure in CRPGs. LOVED them. If I could figure out how to play them today, I would. DosBox supposedly slows machines down enough to play stuff like that, but I've never been able to get it to work.... *sigh*
http://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_two
Oh wow. Thank you!
Don't thank me, thank CD Projekt. They've done a huge amount of work to gain the rights and to port the games for modern systems despite of how unlikely it is they'll ever make any real profits from doing so.
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Good for Chris. He can keep delivering good games and Obsidian with Sawyer can keep delivering subpar games.
You still haven't worked that out of your system? Go hit a punching bag or something, there's no need for these tantrums.
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I'd LOVE that. The SSI Gold Box games were my first adventure in CRPGs. LOVED them. If I could figure out how to play them today, I would. DosBox supposedly slows machines down enough to play stuff like that, but I've never been able to get it to work.... *sigh*
http://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_two
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Happens to me ~50% of the time.
Might be related to how I often get "assign" button instead of "recall" button in Stronghold Actions panel, also a purely graphical glitch.
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Why are people asking and posting news about Chris Avellone in the PoE sub-forum? It seems more of a General or a Computer and Console subs material since he had a huge role in Obsidian, not so much in PoE.
There is even a thread about him working on DOS2.
There are other (sub-)forums here?
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Honestly, that doesn't make much sense at all. A fire blight is made of fire; how can it possibly burn to death if burning is its very existence? When was the last time you could put a fire off by adding more fire to it?
You're inventing your own lore here. Fire blights aren't made of fire, they're (fragments of) souls bonded with fire. But just because they can channel, control and use fire, that doesn't mean they can necessarily withstand arbitrary amounts of energy and heat. And we know they do have limits, because they can't just create/absorb more fire and grow bigger.
Don't get me wrong, I like that blights are immune to their own elements - it does make sense and it's good for gameplay - but it's not something the lore as we know it demands.
That said, flat-out immunity to a specific type of physical damage very rarely makes sense. Why, exactly, are earth blights immune to slashing? An axe would still carry lots of momentum and act as a crushing weapon, even if the blade couldn't cut into the rock for some reason. And if the blade hit an edge on the surface of the rock, it would still concentrate all that momentum over a tiny spot, effectively dealing at least some piercing damage. High resistances - even very high - do make sense, immunities don't. Making some of the toughest monsters in the game arbitrarily immune to a specific physical damage type is an example of what I call artificial difficulty.
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There's an easy workaround: play normal mode and delete your save files manually when you die.
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Come on man wearing Armor doesn't require any special strength? Aloth with that little thin frame in huge plate mail. Sure its a game but seriously go put on some platemail. I could see Durance wearing some because the dude has built himself up over time but Aloth or Kana or Sagani ... not so much.
No, wearing plate armour doesn't require any special strength. Shows how much you know about armour, especially considering how you call it "plate mail".
Aloth has perfectly ordinary, lean frame and MIG and CON that give no penalties. Kana is a huge aumaua; Sagani is a muscular, stocky dwarf, a long distance hunter and an archer; both have high MIG and bonuses from CON too, so why on Earth would the not be able to wear armour?!?
I had to laugh at sapientNode's paragraph about plate and Aloth, though.... Not in a mean way - but.... There was a German princeling back in the 15th century or so. His sword and plate mail are still standing around in a castle near Stuttgart, saw them myself back when my second grandchild was born and we were there for a month. He was shorter than I am (so about 5 feet 5 inches) by looking at his suit of mail. His sword was about as tall as my husband - so around 6 feet or so. Now admittedly there weren't photos back then, but drawings were pretty veracious I think - whoever produced them did NOT show the prince in a real good light: he was short, very muscled, but.... um.... entirely unprepossessing. Somehow, he got hoisted onto his horse to get out to the battlefield in full plate (articulated, but NOT light - the full suit according to the plaque beside it weighed 200 + pounds) and once on the battlefield, he'd of course get unhorsed at some point - and THEN he'd be swinging a sword taller than he was by a foot or so, and wearing 200 pounds of metal.
Museum plaques are notoriously untrustworthy. 200+ pounds seems more than a bit implausible, seeing how most full plate armours weigh less than 50 lb. Armours specifically made for jousting could sometimes weigh up to 100 lb, but they weren't used for combat.
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Seriously guys, go look at some re-enactors. You'll see that the majority of them are perfectly ordinary men, not some hulking mountains of muscle. Typically a good portion of them are outright nerds (no offence) with physique that goes along with the title, yet they have no problems moving about and doing combat demonstrations.
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Not to mention a rogue in plate or a mage in plate makes no sense. Neither have the might/strength to put this **** on and even move in it properly.
This is just plain untrue. Wearing armour doesn't require any special strength - any ordinary man can do it - and it certainly doesn't require any special skill as in some games. Armour is designed to be easily worn. Yes, it's certainly more tiring to spend a day in armour instead of your ordinary clothes, but any "adventurer" would be fit enough that they can easily function and move about in one.
There are two main reasons why mages generally don't wear armour in games:
- Tradition.
- Mages are generally balanced by making them glass cannons.
Breaking away from silly traditions is only refreshing. The second reason is not a problem if making mages more tanky also makes them less cannon, as it does in PoE.
In fact, unless the lore specifically states that using magic in armour is particularly difficult, they should be wearing even more armour than fighters. Why? Because they don't need to move as much. They don't need to dodge attacks, wave their swords and shields around and step back and forth, trying to balance between defending themselves and finding an opening to attack. Mages can just stand behind the front line and call down fire from the sky, so why shouldn't they be protected while doing it?
As stated the only real strat as of now is choke points where you can force enemies to dance in the back trying to get to you as you pick them off one by one.
So realistic there right...
When we get to a place where enemies scale walls and we are not relying on HP and things can literally be one shot like real life we still need a method to hold down enemies.
If a constant aggro generation in not preferable then perhaps a per rest aggro that yanks or stuns for those times that the AI has decided to chase a character across the map which ends up being better anyway because then when he finally comes back or they do even if they downed your guy they are faced with my main force. it is just annoying because of the time element and that I have to pan around more.
Real AI is very far off and so is more realistic combat scenarios aside from FPS.
Real world AI would run away and do random things. It also would seriously make bad choices and mistakes and totally screw up.
I am annoyed I have to rely on an even cheesier mechanic as in standing in a doorway to take on enemies one by one as my chanter just sings away and my mage has a dance party.
Taunts allow for more open combat and add a method in which we can somewhat defend our squishies and mitigate the random AI mechanic.
Nothing is perfect but something like what is already incorporated with the fighters pull skill could be opened up to all classes and also made per rest and bumped up in use per encounter.
It really sounds to me like you're not taking advantage of all the options the game already provides. There are many, many ways to protect the more vulnerable party members. There are numerous caster-protection spells and stasis shield spells and items and abilities that help movement and disengagement. There are defensive and melee-oriented skills and items. There are lots and lots of CC spells and abilities. There are alternate weapon sets and Spiritshift. There are countless ways you can position your party. You can lump your casters together or keep them apart and bring some characters in only after the combat begins. You can have a secondary tank start combat in the back row with a ranged weapon. You can have a frontline character ready to disengage and move back to protect others. And so on.
There really are dozens of ways to deal with these problems, and they're all more tactical/stretegic than having your tank announce to the enemies that their mothers were hamsters and their fathers smelt of elderberries.
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A taunt feature/system [---] would allow for a much more strategic battle.
Could you expand on this, please?
It's a common misconception that giving players more control over the flow of battle automatically leads to increase in tactical depth. This is not true; there needs to be a balance of control and unpredictability. Being able to plan for failure and to adjust to changing combat situation is a major part of tactics. Explicit control over aggro mechanics leads to static, predictable combat flow, eliminating the need for backup plans and multiple lines of defence.
I think this was very evident in DA series. It was extremely easy to get every enemy to attack your tank, and if someone eventually broke off and went after your mage, a quick taunt got them back in line. There was no need to protect your back line, and no need to even consider how to protect your back line. What's so "strategic" about that?
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I just pick whatever looks good. Many here already complain that the game is too easy, so I see no reason to min-max every little detail.
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RNG sucks I agree. As far as loot goes that is.
IN my opinion everything should be hand placed based on the overall design of the world and campaign.
However I think we would be hard pressed to find developers that can think in that scale or have the producers go ahead to limit items based a certain design.
RNG has become the go to in order to please the people who just want stuff and will lose attention if stuff is not dropping.
Some of us remember quite well finding a single +2 blade and it being like the most amazingly powerful item you find for 3/4 of the game.
I think evolving weapons is a cool idea and I think a very robust crafting system could allow for non linear games and a feeling of finding or creating something very powerful.
Could someone please tell me why everyone always assumes that a procedural loot system inevitably results in massive amounts of more and more powerful items like in Diablo or Borderlands? Is it because they can't differentiate between how things usually are from how things can be?
I loved how magic items were much more rare in BG1 than in BG2. Varscona, that +2 longsword (with additional +1 cold damage) was, by far, my most used weapon in that game, but you know what? There was absolutely zero reason why that sword had to in possession of Greywolf instead of any number of characters a well-designed loot system could've randomly picked, such as Meilum the Masterful, Raemon, Drasus, Desreta or any of the groups hired to kill you or that you could otherwise pick a fight with.
I think people grossly overestimate both the quality of hand-placed loot and the amount of thought the devs actually put into placing it. While the loot in BG series was more or less appropriately placed, it really was nothing more than that. That's nothing that a well-implemented procedural loot system can't handle, but it can also handle arbitrarily large amounts of loot drops while ensuring that all weapon and item categories are well-represented and distributed evenly in a progressive manner. The hand-placed loot in both BG1 and BG2 failed in that regard.
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Hmm, can't say I can recall a game where RNG loot has given me any worthwhile replay value, let alone huge. I've found deep gameplay systems that allow for multiple ways of accomplishing the same goal, that are satisfying to execute, give replay value. The chance to get different gear than I got last time? I can't see that making me want to play through something again.
Maybe it could be nice -in addition- to the above, depending on game design in certain genres. But by itself, no chance of saving a game from an uninstall after completion. On the other hand, it's easy to see how RNG in a game based on class/party builds, significant RNG in loot just spoils the whole thing. (Like really, not getting your Holy Avenger in BG2 when you wanted to be a pally? That'd be terribe).
RNG in fights would help a ton in a game like this, where most fights aren't really 'designed' encounters, more just some random mobs standing around. Would spice if up to have some different mobs standing around, though not a great deal. (Idealy solution is less trash fights and more designed encounters, but that starts pushing towards a different genre).
I prefer limitations and choices on what one can do in a single playthrough myself, to encourage replay value. It's not terribly hard to do, but most RPG's tend to go the way of letting you get almost everything in a single run. Constraints breed creativity and all that.
Item randomization mod is one of my must-have mods for BG1/2, and that's just a really naive, simplistic implementation of item randomization. Let's be clear here: "the chance to get different gear than I got last time" is not the reason why I "want to play through something again" - but it absolutely increases my enjoyment of the game.
Not getting the Holy Avenger isn't all that horrible really, there are plenty of excellent weapons in the game - especially when you adjust your mindset: you shouldn't take every item for granted and plan your playthrough around the items you know you're going to find, you should plan for the unexpected and find ways to make do with what you get. If paladins are too weak without Carsomyr - another discussion entirely - then that's a problem with class balance, not loot distribution. And, of course, procedural loot doesn't mean that unique monsters can't have specific, unique loot (why do people even keep bringing this up?)
Okay, that's fair. Certainly people use the Item Randomizer mods for BG2 and Tutu for much the same reason. My own experience with said mod was iffy (I found that items ended up in hugely inappropriate locations), but I can at least understand the sentiment.
Personally, I get a certain amount of replay value out of predictability. In BG2, I would think to myself, "oh, I should bring a paladin for Carsomyr," and I would eagerly look forward to reaching a level where I could brawl with Firkraag and seize the legendary sword. In PoE, I have the same sort of calculus about a weapon like Tidefall, or Tall Grass. I could name other examples in PoE and other games - loot is something I look forward to having and using in linear RPG.
Counterintuitive as it sounds, I think some of the frustration from people like me may actually result from how little is randomized. In most respects, PoE is very hand-crafted. Areas are plotted out, quests are organized, and gear is placed with a clear guiding intent. That makes the small number of random or pseudo-random gear placements stick out like sore thumbs, and it can make particular playthrough goals (as Oralaina so deftly put it above) kind of senselessly arbitrary. On the other hand? If gear, quests and other things were generally randomized, as you would have it, I dunno if that'd bother me at all. I've played and enjoyed a lot of procedurally generated games. It may be the seemingly random addition of very small amounts of procedural content to an otherwise predictable game that's actually annoying.
Eh. Food for thought.
About your second paragraph: I totally get that, and that's certainly the upside of non-randomized loot. I just think that the downsides are much more significant. The simple fact is that you're gimping your party if you don't have a paladin, someone with proficiency in flails, another with proficiency in katanas etc. Non-randomized loot discourages experimentation with classes and weapon proficiencies because you already know in advance what the optimal setups are. Of course, BG2 with item randomization mod is far from a perfect example, because the game wasn't designed for that and the item distribution in the game is extremely unbalanced - some weapon categories are just better than others, regardless of loot distribution.
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EDIT: Given that, I'm curious why anyone speaks for RNG loot. I understand being impartial either way, but what does it add to the game?
A huge amount of replay value.
Just to be clear: I'd love to have more randomized elements in general, not just loot. I want quests with varying elements, even if they were just some NPCs that change location in each playthrough. I'd certainly like to have more randomization in combat encounters, so that I don't always know that there's a lurker lurking behind that one particular tree. All that would make exploration much more meaningful and worthwhile in subsequent playthroughs, but even just procedural loot would be a huge step in the right direction.
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If this... digital-sadomasochism is how you think videogames should be I worry for you. Like, if you have anything more constructive to spend your time on in your life.
Sounds to me like he's actually enjoying the game, unlike those who "need constant stimulation" and access to 100% of loot in every playthrough to get their "satisfaction".
Where does this idea come from that you need to be able to open every single chest in the game to consider a playthrough "complete"?
Ridiculous. Just move on and play the game.
Did I stutter? "Complete" is not an ambiguous word. You do every quest. Get every item. Get the best outcome in everything. Anything less than everything is not complete. If you think otherwise you should probably go back to grammar school.
Of course it's an ambiguous word, it has multiple meanings after all, which is very much the definition of "ambiguous". You're just picking a rather extreme interpretation. I'd consider a playthrough "complete" when you've finished the main storyline, everything else is bonus.
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What's the earliest use of gib? I first encountered in either quake or unreal tournament, instagib.
Earliest specific use I can remember was when I played Rise of the Triad in 1995, the game would show a "Ludicrous gibs!" message when you destroyed a bunch of enemies with heavy weapons. But I think the term was already well-established at the time.
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I'm surprised to see so many people unfamiliar with the term, it has been used for this very purpose for at least 20 years. I guess it's just less common in some circles than in others. Certainly a common term when it comes to FPS's, but I'm pretty sure it was also commonly used on Bioware's old Baldur's Gate forums.
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If this... digital-sadomasochism is how you think videogames should be I worry for you. Like, if you have anything more constructive to spend your time on in your life.
Sounds to me like he's actually enjoying the game, unlike those who "need constant stimulation" and access to 100% of loot in every playthrough to get their "satisfaction".
Where does this idea come from that you need to be able to open every single chest in the game to consider a playthrough "complete"?
Ridiculous. Just move on and play the game.
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Pollaxe???
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
"Pollaxe" is the correct spelling and the most common one."Poll" is an old word for the top of the head, and here probably refers to the length of the weapon. "To poll" means to cut hair, and pollarded trees are cut at head-height.