Sedrefilos

ObsidianchangedportraitmouthYdwinnowtheysaidmaybetheychangenameOMGOMGOMGnukemnukemnukem!!!!

Party of five until beta, at least. Get over it - subject exhausted - numerous threads. Reopen it after beta.

It's a fact!

Drawing/shiething dual wield weapons looks so cool.

A small example of a stroy you made in your head after an imaginary (or real) session you played that lasted for hours or maybe days (since the dungeon was 3 levels down) but it is only 1 hour tops in video game time. I don't see how all these descriptions add lore or excuse pre-buffing in Pillars really. You go to fight a werebeast, ok you have your spells you have your potions you have the food, you use them during combat and that's it. Why pre-buff. Again it deosen't add anything to the gameplay. Imo, you need a game focused mainly on monster hunting in order to excuse pre-buffing and even then, I'd rather it is a single-character 3rd or 1st person game so there's only you you need to pre-buff. In any case, Pillars has maybe the less restrictions of any other IE-like game so I don't believe adding the freedom to bore yourself with repetitive pre-buffing is good. Scouting ahead and preparing your traps or your party positioning is enough imo. The thing is, as I see it, you like to make stories of your own when playing the game and that's good fo course. I do sometimes pause and let the scenery and the encounter sink in and appriciate the moment but I don't jump out of the video game and land in a tabletop one while doing so. I know what I'm playing and why.

Again, Goddard, you're seeing a video game through the eyes of a tabletop game. Things you do in tabletop might not be as exciting to do in a video game; not for most people at least. And pre-buffing before each fight is one of these. The lore is still there: by fighting monsters you know what their strengths and weaknesses are so you go prepared: you save the spells/potions you need to fight them. You just don't have to scout and prebuff all the time. Saves time, makes flow better.

And because it is 20 years old. The others are not that old yet Anyway, Pillars is not an IE game, even though it takes inspiration from them. It's a different thing and it's trying modern things, things that are working better than those in 20 year old games. If you can't like change then I guess you'll have to stick to those 20 year old games, that gonna be 30 year old games and so on. They were good for the time, they might be fun to play now if you can cope with their chores, but there are reasons developers dropped many of their mechanics.

Oooh... you're from that group of people. I see... a bit late to the party In all seriousness now, I used to like pre-buffing and I remeber specifically enjoyed it in NWN2, mostly because I liked the visual effects of the shield spells hehe. But it got tiresome after a while just as did the resting, even in NWN2 were it lasted literally 5 seconds. I think there's a reason that every game moved away from pre-buffing and that is the repetitive nature of the mechanic. That's why resting is off from most games as are trash encounters, grinding, etc. And, tbh, I appreciate the freedom gives in character builds and gameplay more than not letting you pre-buffing or casting outside fo combat etc. The former matters more than the latter.

Removes a lot, yes. A lot of chore that is! Come on, playing tabeltop vs computer game is big difference. It can be excited in a tabletop DnD session but it sounds annoying in a videogame. Unless the game focuses on monster hunting. Pillars of Eternity: Monster Hunter ξερωγώ. Now that I think of it, I think Witcher 3, a game 50% about hunting monsters removed the bre-buffing mechanic of the 2nd game too. Though I'm not 100% sure of it.

I don't like pre-buffing because it's freaking booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooriiiiiiing!!!!!!!! And tedious. Have buffs strategically placed during fights is the best way to go.

The journal is as ok as it can get I think. You got your quests/tasks on the left, their phaces/descriptions on the right. What else can be done? The only thing I can think of that could help is to let you custom tag your quests. Like put a number or a color or mark so you can know in what irder you want to solve etc. Now, OP, if I had so many quests gathered in there I would have problems with that too, but this is mostly about you just gathering them and not completing them?

This Xth thread about party size has come to its inevitable conclusion: having no meaning whatsoever. And that's just because the no-fivers cannot understand that noone can possibly know if it'll work better or not and the rest of us falling in the trap and trying to explain them that reasonal and objective fact. Joke's on us I guess.

It's importan for people to realize that computer rpgs and tabletop rpgs are different things and can never work the same way; they shouldn't either. One can expect bits from one jumping to the other here and there but never one can emulate the eperience of the other.

I thought about that too - the development of XCOM answered my curiosity, though: they stand out from afar. In isometric games it makes sense.

You do know that backgounds of Pillars are first made in 3D, then get rendered then they got hand painted over screen by screen. It sounds more time consuming to me. The transition from 2D to 3D was not made solely for aesthetics but for time saveing also. In a 3D game you make the assets and then put them wherever you want. Obsidian chose that approach for notsalgia purposes. That's why they put more "3D stuff" in Deadfire. Makes everything more alive and you have to hand-paint less stuff since you just place them over the rendered screen I play games from the mid 80s and as tolerable I'm with graphics, I do appreciate when there is effort in them and they compliment the game atmospherically and aesthetically (andy not mechanically too) to the max.

I don't know. The developers have been clear that they chose 5 because it worked better in early play-testing, and lead to a more balanced game. I think the developers saying "it works better" is a strong argument for 5. At this point they know vastly more about the game than any of us, so their opinion carries weight. Yes, that's what basically I'm saying all this time to the 6-arguers.

I think you got me wrong I usually prefer 3D over 2D too. What I was saying is that 2D is no longer considered a thing of the past and that if Obsidian feels they can have their game easier with 2D backgrounds instead of 3D, especially if the 3D isn't gonna change much apart from the thing that you can rotate the camera (DOS2 utilises its 3D in gameplay - combat/interactivity, Wasteland 2 did not, this diesen;t mean I dodn't liked it being 3D) then let be it. I don't think people will say "oh, I won't play this it's 2D". I think these games "scare" people mostly because of their design rather than their looks. Complicated, non-linear, multi-tasky, ready etc.

The opposite for me, the more I played the more I started to dislike it. Too much design flaws, the game is in between single player and co-op and not catering fully to any side. Its never explained why you can control companions in dialogue. Straightforward quests, pointless features(why is there a big ass ship?) very few on board. Too many useless items and gear. Mostly boring companions who are too isolated from each other just to make playing as any of them could work. Too much power gap between levels it becomes a chore just to keep party's equipment on par during the last 3rd of the game.(managing inventory is pure chore right from the start) Act 3 was also pure chore to just to get to the end which was buggy as hell. It certainly doesn't deserve all the praise it got. Just the first 10-15 hours of it is really fun then its downhill from there which I imagine the only part of it the joke that is "media" got to play before declaring it instant all time classic. If there were a couple of big sites praising it and if it was ablockbuster, meaning the company could easily have paid for reviews, I'd wouldn't care either. But the game is being praised by all the media and by the vast majority of players. Of course only you can decide wether the game is good for you or not, but the collective thoughts usually tag games as classic and, imo, DOS 2 deserves to be called one. Many of the points you mention are not included to those that matter for me and with others I just disagree.

@Archaven and Wormerine, In terms of backgrounds I don't believe it matters that much eye-candy-wise nowadays if they're gonna be 2D or 3D since they're good either way. I mean see how many 2D gsmes are out there with great graphics. Even pixel graphics are considered good now. Thing is, there are no bad graphics anymore only art style. Of course when you have full 3D environment you can intrigue more people who are of the blockbuster side into looking at your game but with so many others playing games in old pcs (like me), tablets, mac (because they use it mostly for work and enjoy some games here and there) I don't think there's that much of a problem. You don't have to be a blockbuster to be considered a good and successful game and a genre can be all about that and live on. Now, as far my personal pereferences go, DOS2 has changed my view about 2D and 3D backgrounds, tbh. 2D backgrounds were great in Pillars but in DOS2 they are equal if not better with the new engine and the fact that they are so interactive now (you can navigate though the environment, move thing, toss them here and there, open stuff, destroy stuff, put them on fire etc) makes the background part the experience and not just a background image. Makes everything even more alive. Basically, it's not even a "background" anymore. But this is the DOS2 "thing", that's what Larian chose to do with the backgrounds: they made the game fully 3D and used it to the limit. If you compare with, say, Wasteland 2, it is fully 3D but the environment is not more interactive than Pillars' 2D backgrounds. So, I guess, I prefer 3D backgrounds if it's made the Larian way and whatever background fits the game if it's not to be fully interactive. PS. The more I play DOS2 the more I like it. I believe it deserves all the praise it got by the media. It's truly a remarkable RPG in all points that matter and far better that I imagined; and I'm maybe not even half way through.

The best thing is that they'll no longer be called "good old" rpgs. All newer games (DOS2, Deadfire, Wasteland 3, Expeditions Viking and many other), after their initial success, they raised their technical level to modern. Graphics, gameplay etc all look modern now and the genre is revived and it's here to stay. I believe the term "classic" or "old school" will drop from the media and they'll use the more general iso-rpgs or crpgs, since they already got new/young people to their fandom. At least that's what I hope

Why will 5 better? I haven't seen any good arguments for 5 as well. That's exactly the point. There is no good argument for neither party size. There is no magic number. Each game is designed to fulfill a specific purpose and it is determained by the developers. If they design the game to be played good with 5 party members then it's gonna be better with 5.If they design it for 6 it's gonna be better with 6. If they disign it for 4 it's gonna be better with 4. Noone can tell right now if the game is gonna be better with 5 or with 6 because noone has played it yet.

Banner Saga does something similar. Strength = damage and health. Of course it is a different type of game but it's a cool mechanic.

It'll look like Bruce Lee.

You either make games for normal people who enjoy playing games or you make games for (those who are self-defined as) gamers.

Everything feels dump only if you're thinking about combat, which is the case with the most I see Keep in mind, stats play a key role in conversations and scripted interactions so if you're heading more for the roleplay (as I do) then stats do matter. Yeah some more than other, true (especially resolve which one's mentioning as a dump stat), but considering they're going to up the roleplay in Deadfire, it's good that stats matter in both combat and conversations/interactions. Also key stats for each class = bad, lame, outdated, boring, restraining, don't put stats anyway if that's gonna be the case, bad, boring... did I mentioned bad and boring?