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Ffordesoon
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Posts posted by Ffordesoon
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I'm playing through PST right now, so I think I can bring a fresh perspective to this discussion.
I think Torment is a masterpiece. I also think it has serious deficiencies as a game, and even some minor deficiencies as a narrative. I just, you know, don't care.
On the other hand, I totally understand why some people find the game a chore. The combat (the most obviously "game-y" part of it, which is why so many people get it confused with "gameplay") is uninteresting at best, the interface is janky and weird, the pacing is annoyingly uneven, it's ultimately a bit too wordy even for me, the characters move too slowly for my tastes (that's a flaw with the engine, though), the area design is sometimes too self-consciously weird for its own good, and the sheer volume of dour philosophizing occasionally grows tedious.
I can't speak to any adherence to or deviation from AD&D, but I wouldn't give two f**ks either way, because I hate it when square pegs are judged by their inability to fit in round holes. Also, house rules, mofos.
Anyway, the game is, all things considered, a bit of a mess.
It's also a masterpiece.
How can this be?
Simple: there are people who judge games by their parts, and there are people who judge games as a whole. Neither group is any better or worse than the other, nor is either group wrong, but only one worships PST as a masterpiece: those who judge it as a whole rather than the sum of its parts.
Its parts, in many ways, are deficient. Sometimes, those deficiencies are endearing. Other times, they're irritating. But for people like PrimeJunta and myself, they are quirks that make the experience what it is. Those who judge a work as the sum of its parts, however, are likely to come away wondering what all the fuss is about.
This is not a failing on their part, any more than it is a failing on Prime's part that he (she?) judges the experience as a whole. It does not imply deficient intelligence or imagination, though it is quite easy for people like Prime and myself to fall into that trap. PST is the sort of game you get unhealthily attached to. But it's not a failing on anyone's part that they feel differently.
EDIT: Also, I don't know how to embed links in text here, but a quick study of GNS Theory helps to contextualize what I'm saying, I think. It's kind of astonishing it's never brought up in cRPG discussions, because much of it is more applicable to said discussions than any tedious "dumbed down for the filthy casuals" rhetoric.
EDIT 2: Oops, forgot the link:
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@Sacred_Path:
That's how I feel. I think the actual number of dedicated min/maxers is relatively small; most people who use exploits don't do so on purpose. They stumble into them while they're messing around with the systems, and assume that if it's in the game, it's supposed to be there. Thus, they use it.
I can only think of a few times I've deliberately "gamed the game" to get an advantage, and they were all time-consuming efforts that I undertook because there were inherent flaws in the design.
In Skyrim, for example, I used the Iron Dagger exploit to level up my Smithing quickly because I was tired of having the materials for better armor taking up useless space in my inventory. I couldn't do anything with them, because the best materials were by and large rather difficult to come by (randomized mineral drops suuuuuck), I had no choice but to keep the stuff somewhere. I could have put the junk in my storage chest in Breezehome or whatever, but it annoyed me that I had all this junk I couldn't use stashed away in there. And if I sold the stuff, A) I wouldn't have it to use anymore, and B) I wouldn't be able to name all my armor, which meant sorting it would be a pain.
There were a bunch of other reasons, too, like the level scaling (which was admittedly better than Oblivion's by a wide, wide margin, but still resulted in some annoying quirks) and the mysteriously ineffective lower-level armor (I don't mean it was simply not as good as high-level armor, but that the armor is mysteriously ineffective against some random foes for reasons it's impossible to know unless you look it up on the internet, thus driving you to brute-force your way through encounters by using exploits to get higher-level armor). I was also playing on 360, so I couldn't use any mods to solve the problem either.
Yes, I deliberately exploited the broken leveling mechanic to my advantage, but I did so because there wasn't a kosher way to go about solving my problem. It's kind of like piracy in that way.
I can think of several fairly simple solutions to the problem. No randomized mineral drops, for one. For another, they could have let me give the materials to a blacksmith with the required skills to craft a suit of armor I could name myself for the same price as a standard one. That would get rid of the materials I gathered and give me the same result as crafting without forcing me to level up in smithing to buy good armor.
But all of that is beside the point, said point being that I wouldn't have used the exploit in the first place if the game hadn't driven me to it through its inconsistent and sloppily executed mechanics. Trust me, I played "the right way" for a long, long time before I gave in. If I'd been able to see what the hell I was doing wrong, at the least, I wouldn't have exploited the game in the first place.
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I wouldn't want it for P:E, but I actually really liked Dark Souls' idea of having a single currency for leveling up and buying items.
And yes, SunBroSolaire, your handle reminded me of that system. Also: PRAISE THE SUN!
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This argument is dumb.
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Lot of good stuff in here. Keep it coming.
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@Pandamaniac:
I get what you're saying. I don't agree, for a number of reasons I don't feel like listing right now, but I do totally understand your concern.
@rjshae:
Well, it can cut both ways. Sometimes you want to replay the game simply to see how different decisions might have played out, in which case a substantial starting advantage eases the pain of having to go through all the non-story stuff again to get to the story bits. I replayed Alpha Protocol on Easy for exactly that reason.
(BTW, it is WAY more enjoyable on Easy, 'cause you can cheese your way through the crap parts and focus on the good parts.)
But I do think having a more substantial challenge the second time around could also work, and is just as valid a form of NG+ as any other. It really depends on what you're looking for out of the game.
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I firmly agree, especially if the in- game economy isn't going to matter, as it didn't in Skyrim.
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@Raz:
It's an interesting idea! Probably out of scope, but interesting.
@Everyone else:
Lots of good ideas, lots of positivity... I like it! Keep 'em coming.
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I was reading over the replayability thread and realized I hadn't seen anyone mention a New Game Plus mode yet. Seeing as how I have believed for years that some type of New Game Plus mode should be in pretty much every game you can theoretically "finish," I thought it would be a good suggestion for PE.
I don't know how it would be done. I hope to sort that out with you lovely forumites.
I'm anticipating some pushback on this, and I can imagine some of the arguments against it already. I'd like to keep this post short, so I won't preemptively respond to any of them except the one which I believe will have the most supporters: "If we want to start from scratch as another class, why wouldn't we take the NG+ bonus every time?"
While I personally don't care if another player would want to replay the game with a significant starting advantage (one of the things I was hoping to discuss was exactly what advantage might be conferred on repeat playthroughs, BTW), I understand the complaint. My solution - in addition to making the NG+ bonus optional - would be to limit said bonus to the classes with which you've already completed the game.
You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I will preemptively address one other possible point of contention before it festers. I know Sawyer has said they want to keep levels nice and low so characters can be carried over to the expansion and even a sequel. I'm on board with that, and would thus support without reservation any reasonable suggestion on how to facilitate that while allowing for an NG+ system. Starting over at Level 1 with substantial advantages in other ways would be the obvious choice, but I'm open to suggestions.
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Dude. Start MotB.
I'm a crazy Obsidian fan, and I wanted to slit my wrists five minutes into NWN2. MotB is an amazing alternate-universe NWN2 disguised as an expansion. Skip to it.
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@Razsius:
I agree. Fire Emblem thread now. More useful.
@KaineParker:
Hey, thanks! :D
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@Raszius:
Surprisingly, we are in agreement on every point. Yes, even the ones about Fire Emblem. Which is wicked awesome.
*raises hand skyward in expectation of a high-five from Raz*
I'm playing on Classic Normal, BTW, and it's still an MF. I've reset the game four times now so a character doesn't have to die.
Weirdly, three of those times, it was Sumia who bit it. It's like she's marked for death!
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mommy why is everybody shouting
i scared
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Bravado points: these are points you gain for every significant act you perform--every creature you kill, door you unlock, creature you sneak past, trap you avoid, and so forth.
Each time you return to camp for healing, your current bravado points are cut in half.
When you are awarded a chunk of XP, you gain a percentage XP bonus (+0/5/10/20%) based upon your bravado points. Your bravado points are then reduced by the net XP award, to a minimum of zero.
When you level up, your bravado points are reset to zero.
I love this idea so much.
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I really fail to see why it is fun to sneak past foes (btw with a large party), missing all the fun a combat may offer. You really would enjoy this people? OK, I never played games where the goal is to avoid encounters via sneak, just games where you use sneak to take your enemy by surprise, but I simply cannot imagine that sneaking for the sole purpose of avoiding a combat is fun. So anyone care to explain what is so fun about it?
Well, it depends on the implementation, but the enjoyable element of sneaking past enemies is pretty easy to quantify. It's because you feel like you're getting one over on your enemies, who are usually physically superior, through your wits alone.
And, because you don't kill your enemies, there's a sense that you haven't taken the easy way out by directly engaging them, which adds to the feeling of superiority over them. It's like, "I could have killed you, but I chose not to, and you'll go back to your family tonight and never even know I was here. Hee hee hee, aren't I kind to spare your life?"
That's why I like it, anyway.
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I don't understand. It felt like we were getting somewhere for a second, but then the old binary "quest XP vs. kill XP" mentality rose up again. The system we're talking about here is not even dependent on quests or kills. It's dependent on overcoming challenges.
Did nobody here actually play New Vegas? You were rewarded with XP and perks for completing skill challenges, including killing a certain number of creatures. Yes, there was also kill XP, but that was a holdover from Fallout 3.
The point is, Sawyer has said that he wants skill challenges similar to those in New Vegas to be in PE. Disarm a bunch of traps, get rewarded with XP. Fight a bunch of dudes, get rewarded with XP. Read a bunch of books, get rewarded with XP. Sneak past a bunch of guys, get rewarded with XP. The idea is for the game to reward the things you like doing with XP. How is this any different philosophically from a per-kill XP system? It's the same amount of XP, but parceled out in lump sums.
Remember also that this XP gain is an objective in itself; it's kept entirely separate from quests. If you kill five guys and run away without ever completing the quest attached to the fight, that counts toward your kill total regardless. If you encounter enemies in between locations, and you kill them, that counts toward your kill total. Kill one innocent dude for looking at you funny, and that's counted as a kill too. Kill a hundred guys, and you get a hundred guys' worth of XP. Repeat the feat, and you get another hundred guys' worth.
And I know the objection there is, "Well, what if one of the guys you kill is a crazy-difficult boss, huh? Surely you don't want to be deprived of XP for vanquishing him?"
No, because there could be a separate XP bonus for beating him, plus he counts toward your kill total.
New Vegas had its own set of issues, it's true, but the only thing that system does differently from a per-kill system is avoid the headache of having to plan out how much XP each individual enemy is worth, thereby making it much easier to balance. It also serves as a way to prevent people from killing villagers and the like solely to level up, without taking a moral stance on the killing of villagers. You can kill villagers and be a bad guy while earning XP, but you have to prove you like killing villagers.
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Just because that's all they showed doesn't mean there isn't more there.
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Addendum to previous: I should mention that I totally agree that every choice should have a consequence, and with the idea that the same amount of XP for easy stealth and difficult combat weights the player's choice in favor of stealth. I don't think anyone's arguing otherwise, though.
What I support is separate but equal consequences for all possible choices. If you sneak into a noble's house, steal a thing, and sneak out of it undetected, the other nobles in the area should beef up their security as a result. If you attempt to play a diplomatic pacifist in all situations, you should be regarded as weak and ineffectual by some people, and your camp should be marked as easy pickings by a group of passing bandits. If you kill everyone in an area owned by a certain faction, that faction should send mobs after you.
The point is to react to the player's choices appropriately, not simply to facilitate all the choices a player might make. That's where the TES games always fall down for me, which is why I say they're Mary-Sue Simulators first and foremost. I absolutely believe in locking players out of content, or an option with which to access that content, because of something they did hours before.
That's where the issue really lies, I think, and it's what those on all sides of this debate seem to have failed to adequately express. Our (by which I mean everyone on this forum) ideal PE experience is one that is equally non-ideal for all players. By which I mean that every player should feel as if he or she could've done things differently and gotten a different result, but no player should feel as though the game didn't play fair with them by not facilitating that result.
EDIT: @TRX-80:
When talking about the design focus of other RPGs, no, we shouldn't. Diablo is combat-focused, and Torment is quest-focused. That doesn't make one automatically worse or better than the other, but it does mean that one is pretty obviously different from the other.
When talking about PE, however, I agree.
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@Razsius:
The "line between the two" is pretty simple, actually. It all depends on what the point of combat is within the framework established by the game. If combat is something thrown in your way to stop you achieving a story-related goal, then the game as a whole is focused on the achievement of that goal.
In a good quest-focused (which I should really amend to "objective-focused," as that's more accurate) game, you are fighting an army off in order to save Steve the bard, a cool NPC you really like, from being executed for treason (or whatever), not because it's super-fun to fight dudes (though it hopefully is). Combat is an obstacle that gets in the way of simply walking into town and freeing Steve, because freeing Steve wouldn't be dramatically satisfying if you could do it easily.
In a good combat-focused game, combat encounters are an end in themselves. The goal of them from a player's perspective is to continually provide levels and loot so the PC can continually get better at combat. Combat-focused games may provide flimsy justifications for combat, but the combat itself is the point. There might be an ostensible story goal, but it's usually a variation on "get the Chalice of Ultimate Awesomeness so you can be awesome at being awesome!" A combat-focused RPG is a dungeon crawler, basically.
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I think there are a lot of unexplored possibilities within the keyword system, and I think it's entirely appropriate for Wasteland 2. The vitriolic reaction to its dialogue system has more to do with mismanaged expectations and most players' relative lack of experience with the mechanic outside of the horribly implemented systems in Morrowind and Oblivion than it does any real deficiency in the mechanic, IMHO.
How exactly It follows that I think said mechanic is equally appropriate for an unrelated game following in a different tradition entirely is beyond me, but I don't think it is remotely suited to PE. The IE games were justly renowned for their vast and meaty dialogue trees, and any spiritual successor should carry that basic system over.
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@Raszius:
Upon rereading, I agree. It seems overly arbitrary. That's because I didn't do enough to link that statement to my larger argument, for which I apologize.
To be clearer, a successor to the IE games should reward quest XP or an equivalent because the IE games themselves were quest-focused. Killing monsters was almost always in the service of a quest or getting to a quest. Even Icewind Dale tended to be structured like this - although if we were talking about a successor to only IWD, I would be arguing in favor of kill XP, because those games were built around combat.
Basically, my point is that the game's progression structure should be built around the primary activity the player is engaging in. If PE is a combat-focused game like IWD, the player should primarily be rewarded for engaging in combat, because that encourages her to engage in more combat. If it's a quest-focused game, the player should primarily be rewarded for questing, because that encourages the player to do more quests. If it's a stealth-focused game (which it pretty obviously won't be), the player should etc.
Pretty much Game Design 101, yeah?
It's worth noting also that I wouldn't be opposed to combat/kill XP being awarded in the game. I can understand the arguments being made by those on both sides of the debate, but for me personally, it's not a big issue either way.
The only point I've been making is that, if PE is anything like Baldur's Gate or Planescape (which seems more likely than it mainly being an IWD successor), kill XP is not crucial to the game.
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It's kind of interesting that the IE games have retroactively become "open world" just because so few modern games offer a tenth of their freedom, isn't it?
I heard someone call Dragon Age: Origins an "open world RPG" recently, and it made me sad, because people think of any freedom of movement at all as automatically "open world" these days.
Just a thought.
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Yes, I think we can all more or less agree that however the final inventory system looks and acts, stacking should be a big part of it.
The good, bad, and the ugly in Infinity Engine games
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
@Raz:
Hey, thanks! :D
Indeed, PST is pretty firmly a Narrativist game, for better or worse. I would call it a cRPG rather than a visual novel for a number of reasons, not least because your stats actually matter (there wouldn't be a "right" way to play the game if they didn't). But in terms of its appeal, the game's pleasures are chiefly novelistic (memorable companions, lovely prose, a wonderfully bizarre world, etc.)
@Sacred_Path:
As someone who sits right on the border between Narrativist and Gamist, I disagree on a couple of counts.
First of all, I would argue that PST doesn't fail in its "game-y" aspects. Most of its mechanical deficiencies are, I feel, forgivable, or at least tolerable. They are "B-minus" aspects of the game, not "F" aspects, if you catch my drift. They're niggling annoyances, not unforgivable sins.
Secondly, you're acting as if a game must satisfy all three player types to be considered successful, even though those player types are often diametrically opposed from one another. You say that "review scores" should never be based on "such niche thinking." I disagree with that, a little, but it's also not a relevant point, because nobody in this discussion is reviewing the thing. Those who love it are talking about why they love it, and those who don't are talking about why they don't. Nothing more, nothing less. Why do we need to conform to a buyer's guide mentality in this discussion?