-
Posts
637 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
4
Everything posted by Ineth
-
Yep. It really nailed the "Heroic adventure trek across the unforgiving icy north" atmosphere, with its combination of awesome music, great graphics design, and pretty good area/world/encounter design. The story was good too imo, it merely refrained from forcing the player's constant attention on itself and overshadowing everything else (as it does in some other RPGs). The story was in fact a lot more nuanced and fleshed out than some of the haters let on, it just didn't always "pop up in your face" -- you needed to actually read books/notes/letters you came across, look at the game world with a keen eye, ask villagers for advice before going off to dungeons, etc., to get the full experience (if you were so inclined). As for "roleplaying": Well why would you need tons of dialog that lets your characters waste time by talking about their feelings and stuff, when you've got great combat and great atmosphere to enjoy...
-
Most likely they have expectations based on what was promised (or, what they think was implied) in the kickstarter though. And don't come her because they have no reason to expect that a forum discussion would be able to overturn those plans.
-
I want to see Corpses hanging from trees
Ineth replied to StrangeCat's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
The BB is already more "dark and gritty" than the BG and IWD games; no need to overdo it. -
Except it won't be represented in the result, that way. I think Immortalis and you are too focused on only looking at it from the perspective of giving any potential person who has a firm opinion on the poll's issue, a platform to voice that opinion. Whereas I also look at it from the perspective of gaining statistical data about where the community as a whole stands on an issue, and that requires additional considerations such as the aforementioned "Other" and "Don't know/care" options. For example, imagine if this (or any other) poll uncovered that 90% of poll participants are in favour of an idea which until then, Obsidian didn't think anyone wanted. Don't you think it makes a big difference to know, whether the idea is in fact near-universally strongly wanted, or whether it's just a tiny organised minority that wants it, and a majority that isn't outspokenly against it but also doesn't see a benefit in it? In the second case, the cost of implementing the idea would only go towards improving the game for a few people, which may not be the best way to spend that time/money. Also, note that in some cases, it actually is possible to have "Don't know/care" as a strong opinion which one would want to become a part of a poll's result, e.g. "I don't care which option the devs choose as long as they feel it's the right thing, and I don't want to let those other forum members control the narrative and make the devs think everyone wants them to implement whatever option ends up being most popular in this poll". Denying them that non-option is just as bad as any other potential bias or slant when creating a poll.
-
Over 100 voters, that calls for an updated graph! (Not that it has fundamentally changed...) Edit: Gotta wonder about the 4% who don't think that getting XP for completing quests is justified... I thought that was the one thing everyone agrees on? Do those voters not want there to be XP at all? Or were they just "tactical" votes to try and increase their favoured XP source's standing compared to all other options? If anyone from that group feels like explaining, I'd be genuinely interested... :D
-
I think that option expresses the desire that special combat encounters that you can stumble on while exploring (and choose to engage in at non-negligible risk to your party and non-negligible drain to limited resources), should be rewarded without the need to have talked to a quest-giver about it first. This might help to... add more excitement / feel-good-moments to travelling through areas with low quest density motivate players to explore the world at their own leasure and role-playing motives, rather than being railroaded into repeating the same rigid routine of "1) talk to every single villager in town, 2) go to nearby wilderness and make a bee-line for quests points, 3) return" in every town/village you travel to In other words, it's about mixing it up a little, adding some positive surprises, and rewarding independent-minded curiosity, not just compliance with things you're told to do by NPCs. PS: The spider queen in the BB would be one possible example of such an encounter.
-
Btw am I the only one who thinks it sucks how the forum software presents the results of this poll (and similar ones)? It shows the votes for each category as a percentage of the sum of all yes-votes cast -- which, in a poll where choosing multiple options is allowed, is pretty meaningless. Instead, it should be treating each checkbox-option as a separate yes/no (checked/unchecked) question, and show the choices as a percentage of the number of poll participants. Like this:
- 436 replies
-
- 10
-
-
Actually, it looks like lots and lots of non-gamer feminists (probably from tumblr) found it relevant enough to join the flame war.
-
Still missing the important "other (please specify)" "don't know / don't care (i.e. whatever the devs think is best)" options though, which every poll should have in order to make the results actually meaningful. /petpeeve Also, "Exploration" XP is pretty vague and different people will think of different things when reading it - it might have been useful to break it down into multiple concrete options, such as: "Clearing fog of war" "Entering a new area for the first time" "Collecting 'discovery tokens' that are spread across the countryside" "Discovering special landmarks" "Completing scripted interactions"
-
Sensuki's Pillars of Eternity Feature Wishlist
Ineth replied to Sensuki's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
They are to us, but unfortunately they may not be to Obsidian based on what we have seen and heard so far... I can actually live with the full-party stealth, it's just a little awkward. But Fog of War that fails to hide what's behind solid walls and locked doors, is just terrible. -
Sensuki's Suggestions #021: Talents AND Feats
Ineth replied to Sensuki's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
Yeah that's a design goal which Josh has stated multiple times before, and imo it's a good one. Separating active and passive talents into two separate pools and making every character take a fixed number of each, would destroy that flexibility. So it's a -1 from me to this particular Sensuki Suggestion. -
Actually, in the Infinity engine games it means that you probably let the party AI make some of the combat decisions for you. Whereas if you used auto-pause options (enemy sighted, spell cast, target gone) that kicked in right before the party AI would have kicked in to choose a new action for that character, you'd have done more of the tactical decision-making by yourself... Edit: Actually, party AI could be turned off, which kinda invalidates the above above point.
-
It should be possible to have auto-pause immediately kick in whenever a choice is required from the player ‒ in order to get the most "tactical RPG" (rather than "action RPG") experience possible. In practice, that means auto-pausing in the event of... trap found --> pause to decide whether to immediately stop the characters or keep them on their current path, and whether to go around the trap or try to disarm it. combat started --> pause to decide what initial buffs/preparations/maneuvers to perform spell (or other ability1) plus recovery time completed --> pause to decide what that character should do next special combat ability2unlocked --> pause to decide how to spend that ability target gone3 --> decide what the character who were attacking that target should do next In each of those cases, a decision needs to be made - and I think auto-pausing to "ask the player" is better than letting the party AI handle it. Btw with the above auto-pause options, gameplay will feel much closer to a tactical turn-based game than when auto-pausing every n seconds, which is just plain stupid in a cooldown-based system like this and the fact that they added that auto-pause option (but not all of the useful ones listed above) worries me as it suggests that the devs do not actually understand the point of auto-pause and only added options "blindly" based on the IE games. So there you go, I presented one paradigm ("ask the player whenever a choice is required") that a good auto-pause system should support. There are alternative paradigms of course, e.g. "prompt the player only in case of problems" would be more suited to players who want to play in real time (or with manual pausing) most of the time, and only have the auto-pause system kick in when not changing course would probably lead to failure - e.g. auto-pause on 'weapon ineffective', 'health drops below 20%', etc. By having enough auto-pause options, players could choose between those paradigms (and possibly others), or a mix of them. The devs should think of auto-pause options in terms of making sure that certain auto-pause paradigms are fully supported, rather than randomly adding individual options "because game X had it" or "because it was easy to implement" while missing more important ones. --- 1) Basically anything except normal weapon attacks ‒ those should not pause after each attack, but instead just keep on attacking in the same way. 2) e.g. a Chanter having completed enough chants to be able to cast an Invocation, or a Monk having suffered enough wounds to unlock wound-based abilities 3) e.g. dead, or teleported away, or went invisible, etc.
-
"They refuse to cover it because Daniel Vavra is pro-GG" (emphasis on "because") is a strong claim that needs evidence. Are there leaked emails from a journalist admitting such black-listing? Is there some statistical analysis showing that similar game releases (for a useful & detailed value of 'similar') normally do get coverage on those gaming sites?1 Did they cover Vavra's game project before he came out as pro-GG? --- 1) Lots of games large and small get made every year across the globe; Only a few (mostly American ones) get big coverage on American gaming news sites.
-
Citation needed
-
What is it about Intel's actions that irked you? They didn't seem unusual to me - just the kind of by-the-book reactions in the name of maximizing profit and doing damage control, that one would expect from a big corporation: A website where Intel places ads targeting a specific group of consumers1, publishes an article which rudely attacks & marginalizes that group, leading some of them to complain... ==> Intel doesn't want to disgruntle that group of consumers [damage control!], and knows that in any case the ads will be more effective in places where the ads' target audience feels welcome & positive [profit!], so it pulls the ads. Some journalists & activists start to publicly accuse Intel of "supporting misogyny" because of its action. ==> Intel does not want to have bad press [damage control!], so it publishes a bland statement reiterating its commitment to corporate responsibility and apologizing for possible offense caused (without actually admitting to any wrongdoing). Did you expect something else? ---- 1) "serious" gamers willing to spend serious money on Intel's Extreme Edition hardware
-
Never knew him, but with his obsession with this drama, his past as a Nazi and a crook on Reddit and his whole "born again" routine, the guy's a fount of amusement I guess feminism is the same as the conventional religions in this regard... the "repentant sinner born again" converts tend to be much more obnoxious fanatics than the people who've simply been socialized into it in their formative years.
-
That's a great article, thanks for sharing. +1 This may be the best moderate pro-#gamergate leaning article yet. Thus it nicely complements the articles by Forbes' Erik Kain, who is leaning towards the anti-#gamergate side but also makes an effort to remain fair and reasonable. PS: Also, I'm going to follow this article's lead and start to drop the term "Social Justice Warriors" in favour of "culture warriors" -- because it is ...wait for it... more inclusive! Btw here are my favourite quotes from the article (formatting added):
-
So... Rather than getting rid of the infestation of left-wing culture warriors in games journalism, we caused right-wing culture warriors to also start seeing gaming as a battleground for their culture wars? That's... balance, of a sort, but I think not what most of us were hoping for.
-
Out of curiosity, do you mean to say that Obsidian is not pushing any message, or that they are pushing a different one than endorsed by game "journalists"?
-
Discussion: the PoE beta xp system
Ineth replied to IndiraLightfoot's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
yes they did. Maybe not using the exact phrase "spiritual successor", but they did communicate that idea in many ways. In their kickstarter pitch, which plainly and purposefully targeted IE nostalgia. In interviews with gaming sites during and after the kickstarter - there was probably not a single one that failed to mention the IE games. By not objecting to interviews/articles on popular gaming sites where the authors actually did use the phrase "spiritual successor" in the introduction/headline/commentary. (At least where I live, it's customary for a journalist to send the interviewee a draft of the edited interview article before release, to get confirmation that the way it was edited/cut/presented still represents their views correctly. And even if they didn't get that chance, they could have complained after the articles were released.) In presentations at gaming conventions, where they started the presentation with huge slides showing the IE games. In their two-sentence pitch on the game's official website, where they boil down the essence of what they are selling to this:"Miss classic cRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment? So do we! Introducing Obsidian's PILLARS OF ETERNITY." Seriously, the effort by some posters here to shout down arguments that involve comparisons to the IE games, and trying to convince us that the whole IE connection is just in our heads and our own fault, is starting to approach the abusive tactic of gaslighting. -
Discussion: the PoE beta xp system
Ineth replied to IndiraLightfoot's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
Isn't that the same with loot, though: If you don't explore the whole map, you might miss some containers/stashes. And with quests: If you don't explore the whole map, you might miss that one blue-circled NPC in the middle of the wilderness who has a mini-quest. (In BG1, each wilderness map had at least 1 local mini-quest like for example "Rescue my child from the wolves in those ruins over there!".) For some gamers, exploration is a gratifying part of the cRPG "experience". The rest can choose to skip it, but they will miss out on stuff -- no matter whether or not there is combat XP. -
Discussion: the PoE beta xp system
Ineth replied to IndiraLightfoot's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
Are you sure that it did, overall? I, for one, doubt it. Much of the quest XP was given to each character independently of party size, wasn't it? And yet, in my experience, a BG2 party with 3 or 4 members levelled up much faster than a party with 6 members. -
Discussion: the PoE beta xp system
Ineth replied to IndiraLightfoot's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
I like this idea. -
How to Fix the Attribute Design in Pillars of Eternity Part 2
Ineth replied to Rosbjerg's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
Can someone please explain to me what's up with this whole "closing a long thread and starting a new one in its place" thing? I've observed it lots of times here (Obsidian forums), but never understood the point of it, and I don't see anything like it in other forum communities I visit. Is it occupational therapy for mods so they have something to do and can feel useful? Is it a cargo-cult continuation of a principle that may have once (under difference circumstances) served an actual purpose? Is there someone in the admin team who has a clinical phobia vs numbers higher than 30? The problem is, that it disrupts discussions by making it impossible to use the "reply with quote" functionality on posts that happen to be in the now 'closed off' part of the discussion. Not to mention that it adds to the overall entropy of the forums and makes them more difficult to navigate. /rant