Jump to content

Fiery Rain

Members
  • Posts

    31
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Fiery Rain

  1. Someone needs to ask Josh about this adra regeneration in order to explain/avoid potential plothole. Although it's perfectly possible adra has become PoE's "Nanomachines, son!", so any explanation could be handwaved this way. "It's adra! Who knows what it's capable of!" Also, a little bit of trivia: Josh has said Maros's statue is roughly the size of Waldorf Astoria Chicago, i.e. 209 m. https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/764267162856894465
  2. OK, let's try. 1. How have we been at communicating with you guys? Can't really say actually, haven't followed the beta feedback forums that much (or forums at all, for that matter), but on a cursory glance, well, communication have been pretty good. It did, however, have some hiccups here and there (already mentioned radio silence and so on), so as they say, it could be even better! 2. What did you like about us? Basically, your openness about game mechanics. Josh Sawyer is a big part of that - he never talks in marketing terms ("trust us, it is already awesome and will be even more awesome, don't you worry!"), only concrete and hard facts. 3. What kind of things would you like to see us improve on? The question isn't specified enough. ;-) But I guess when it comes to future projects, you could improve by having more designers on your forums, talking to users about design, decisions and suggestions. 4. What would you like to hear from us in the future? New projects' sneak peeks, teaser trailers, mystery screenshots, Eder's exclusive twitter account... all the usual stuff. 5. Additional thoughts? This should actually go to PoE 2 Wishlist, but I think you guys are reading this thread anyway (and it IS "additional thoughts", indeed!), so here goes: Potential sequel could benefit from more quest-content, I think. Right now quests are very short when it comes to their mechanism and not really involving per se - basically player goes there, does that, and that's that. Two-three-step process, without much mental work or player experimentation. Make player search for potential solutions, make unusual solutions, make player think outside of the box, instead of simply following the journal. "The Final Act" quest is a good example of typical PoE quest - instead of gathering the clues, guesswork, stealthwork and thinking, you basically go to A, B, C points (conveniently specified in the journal), get X, Y, Z information and then go to the Omega point and then everything is solved. TWM improved on these aspects (with puzzles, for example), but there's still a wide room for improvement. Fallout 2 could be a good example, I think, when it comes to quest design and handholding: the game mostly tells you what you need to do, but rarely how. And no, Expert Mode is not really an answer to that! Also factions too could benefit from this for exactly same reason: in PoE, their arcs are too short and simple. Two quests per faction and only one batch of mutually exclusive and simple quests (follow the journal and everything will basically solve itself). I think Fallout: New Vegas is a great example of faction design. Two games, and each of them (well, F2 to an extent) is made by you guys - so go wild! Combat: What is the hardest fight you had in the game? I'm currently replaying game (on Hard, I'm not hardcore enough, keep that in mind) to refresh my memory, but I think the hardest fight in a *good* way was Radiant Spore. It is, I think, the right kind of hard - instead of simply pumping stats through the roof like with dragons and make them one-shot anything and everything, it forces player to adapt and invent a strategy. PoE on the whole is sadly lacking these kind of battles, so this fight really stands out. I think PoE 2 should strive to include more fights like that. Least favorite fights? Basically, any fight which turns the screen in a chaotic mess so it's up to you to systemate this chaos properly. It's a combat pace problem, so yeah. Apart from that, I guess... it would be Kaoto fight. It combines the wrong kind of hard (stats through the stars) and chaotic, quick, messy pace. If the PoE combat was slower, I guess it would have been more enjoyable, but as it stands, you simply don't even have enough time to react. The setup of the fight actually is not too bad, but thanks to the quick tempo... yeah, you can guess. N.B. It seems that Tyranny actually have a much clearer fights (at a glance, at least). I think it's because of: a) larger sprites, b) sharp and hard FX feedback, c) slower tempo. I don't know if that's really the case (you have to play the game, I guess), but if so, well, that's a good sign for PoE 2. Do you feel that there were any boss fights that were to overwhelming or underwhelming? Kraken, for obvious reasons. And Thaos, for the reasons AndreaColombo mentioned. Really guys, you have FOUR easy difficulties, at least make PotD AND upscaled Thaos formidable enough! The upscale option is there for a reason! If someone plays PotD and enables upscale, well, I think it's because this someone wants as much challenge as he/she can get. I also think Thaos is not too strong simply because he's a Priest... N.B. Now that I think about it... if optional level-scaling changed enemy encounter composition based on a level, not only difficulty, would that be good or bad? BUGS BUGS BUGS Mostly stronghold-related. 1. Crowd sounds remain when you complete Gathbin quests. 2. The companion barks regarding fortress progress should activate only once (or at least, you should severely reduce their frequency). "Better, indeed". "Better, indeed". "Better, indeed". Gellarde! 3. Regarding stronghold dilemmas. If Watcher decides to, for example, convince a thief to surrender herself, she really SHOULD NOT happily return in a randomly fashion just a few days after. If someone is exiled, he/she should stay exiled. If someone is imprisoned/perished - well... So yeah, I think that's that. EDIT: Good idea, I think. I recently tried a Druid character and also figured this could be done. It's distinctive enough and not gamebreaking in the least, for it to be limited by per-rest. However, I don't really want more balance changes, because I really don't want new bugs to be uncovered. ;-) And BTW, yeah, forgot to mention Sking and Aarik. You guys rock, keep it up!
  3. BTW, I'd also like to reiterate issue already mentioned by someone in this thread. If running two instances of a game causes saves to corrupt and progress to reset, you should definitely try to include some fail-safe mechanism to prevent that from happening. "The game is already running" message or something. Losing progress just because Steam froze momentarily and you clicked the second time to "Play", or accidentally pressed Enter several times... well, yeah.
  4. Yeah, I too would suggest that you guys just focus on bugfixing. New features and rebalancing inevitably will bring new bugs, and I doubt someone would want that. I'd like to report one bug that started to occur since 3.03. No one else reported it - at least I never saw it - so I suppose this is difficult to reproduce and very situational, but still: - After you start a new game and quickload and any point, it's possible that, upon reload, the message "You have successfully installed White March" will appear. You click "Okay", it disappears, but after any reload of any save, it will appear again. And again. I don't know if this is harmless, since it's the new game: who knows, maybe this resets add-on progress or something, maybe not, but it's hardly the most pleasant thought. The only workaround I have found - Immediately after new game begins, quicksave and then quickload. The message may disappear; if not, try to load autosave created at the start. If not, alternate between loading these two until it happens. So far it worked, I suppose, somewhat stubbornly, but worked. But I don't know if it will appear again in the future, nor do I know what to do in such a case. More importantly, if this message indeed resets the addon or something, I don't know if this fixes it altogether or just stops spawning the message while resetting the progress just the same. And if you can, look into this Chanter Rime traps bug littering the save file, please.
  5. I believe the OP problem is: You first stumble upon these robbers in Copperlane deserted house. After a fight, you find a letter. Now you can show it to Doemenel and he will send you to complete the job. But if you, for some reason, instead of showing it to him, decide to just ask about hearing, he sends you to find the letter which you already have. This breaks the quest altogether, so you can't complete the quest via normal means nor you can just show the letter to Doemenel or Lord Reymont to workaround it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
  6. I should probably add that I would welcome if someone else shared their experiences with dilemmas in this thread, be it positive or negative. As far as I remember, before the stronghold improvements came, it was a popular topic around here that stronghold should be reactive and many players often talked about possible dilemmas in BG2. So I think now is the perfect time to share the experiences. The reason for this is simple - the game is still receiving patches and still can (although not very likely, granted, but it's better than nothing) possibly improve these aspects. When the patching stops, everything will be set in stone and any complaints (and there will be complaints) will most likely be ignored. So if you have any gripes, it's probably better to state them now.
  7. First off, dilemmas are very cool addition to your stronghold, so thank you guys for including them. They manage to strike a good balance between being fairly weighty and flavour-y at the same time. Although sometimes your character's possible responses lack necessary nuance and come off as a little thick-headed and childish (local cruel lord comes to ask you for advice - your character gets to respond basically this: "YOU ARE EVIL, EVIL MAN!!! GUARDS SEIZE HIM!!!"), it's all good for the most part. However, these dilemmas appear to lack... let's say finishing touches when it comes to showing possible results and a result, when this happens, they feel underdeveloped. Let me give you a few examples. Let's start with the local drunkard dilemma. He asks you to help him with his money problems and you can suggest him to work for Bellasege. He thanks and leaves. But when you visit Sanitarium in Brackenbury to check on him - he isn't there and Bellasege bark strings are unchanged, so your choice is effectively ignored. It would be enough to simply move his model to the sanitarium and assign a simple bark string for him to make this choice matter. Because, if the game forgets right away about your choice, what's the point then? And I know it all can be justified and excused - he simply forgot, he got lost on the way, he changed his mind and returned home and so on and so on. But that's not the point. After all, when you save a girl in Heritage Hill from guls, she does not disappear, but instead shows in Crucible Knights' Keep with a bark string. Simple, but effective. Second, and perhaps more perplexing, is the Nyry the Deft Hand dilemma. She shows up in Caed Nua and asks you to help her "disappear". One option can allow you to pay her 1000 coppers for her to disappear from Dyrwood altogether. She thanks, says she's in your debt and leaves. But almost immediately, random algorithms trigger and make her appear again, this time simply as a "bad visitor", just like before. So not only your choice is rendered meaningless, you just effectively wasted 1000 coppers on hot air. I mean, what is this? You invested resources and in exchange, get basically nothing? Essentially, you could just say "Sorry, couldn't help you with that" and get the same result, only without money-wasting. What's the point of this option then? So guys, I think if you started something, you should take another step as well, so to speak. These half-measures aren't helpful. Remember Chekhov's rule! In short: The game gives you multiple choices when it comes to visitor dilemmas, but then for the most part forgets to show results of your selected choice, even when it's perfectly possible, instead acting as if you never made them in the first place and rendering the whole process fairly superficial.
  8. Perhaps I'll repost this thread in General Discussion for more players to share their experiences, I don't know. But okay, let's start. First off, dilemmas are very cool addition to your stronghold, so thank you guys for including them. They manage to strike a good balance between being fairly weighty and flavour-y at the same time. Although sometimes your character's possible responses lack necessary nuance and come off as a little thick-headed and childish (local cruel lord comes to ask you for advice - your character gets to respond basically this: "YOU ARE EVIL, EVIL MAN!!! GUARDS SEIZE HIM!!!"), it's all good for the most part. However, these dilemmas appear to lack... let's say finishing touches when it comes to showing possible results and a result, when this happens, they feel underdeveloped. Let me give you a few examples. Let's start with the local drunkard dilemma. He asks you to help him with his money problems and you can suggest him to work for Bellasege. He thanks and leaves. But when you visit Sanitarium in Brackenbury to check on him - he isn't there and Bellasege bark strings are unchanged, so your choice is effectively ignored. It would be enough to simply move his model to the sanitarium and assign a simple bark string for him to make this choice matter. Because, if the game forgets right away about your choice, what's the point then? And I know it all can be justified and excused - he simply forgot, he got lost on the way, he changed his mind and returned home and so on and so on. But that's not the point. After all, when you save a girl in Heritage Hill from guls, she does not disappear, but instead shows in Crucible Knights' Keep with a bark string. Simple, but effective. Second, and perhaps more perplexing, is the Nyry the Deft Hand dilemma. She shows up in Caed Nua and asks you to help her "disappear". One option can allow you to pay her 1000 coppers for her to disappear from Dyrwood altogether. She thanks, says she's in your debt and leaves. But almost immediately, random algorithms trigger and make her appear again, this time simply as a "bad visitor", just like before. So not only your choice is rendered meaningless, you just effectively wasted 1000 coppers on hot air. I mean, what is this? You invested resources and in exchange, get basically nothing? Essentially, you could just say "Sorry, couldn't help you with that" and get the same result, only without money-wasting. What's the point of this option then? So guys, I think if you started something, you should take another step as well, so to speak. These half-measures aren't helpful. Remember Chekhov's rule! In short: The game gives you multiple choices when it comes to visitor dilemmas, but then for the most part forgets to show results of your selected choice, even when it's perfectly possible, instead acting as if you never made them in the first place and rendering the whole process fairly superficial.
  9. First, the line on the screenshot. It's supposed to appear when you encounter vithracks in the Endless Paths the first time and serves as an "introduction" to them, I guess. But since encounters have been revised, now you encounter vithracks a few floors earlier and doesn't make much sense, since you already seen them. Second line in the Maneha's quest. After a dream, she tells you "You told me about your Awakening". But thing is, I never did. Nor is there an option to do so in her dialogue. Maybe there is an event where it's possible, I don't know. Or maybe it's some sort of suspension of disbelief, some sort of hand wave? "Well, your character DID tell her about it, you just never saw it personally"?
  10. The line on the screenshot is supposed to be Lord Whathisname's, and not Chancellor's, I believe.
  11. This animat here keeps respawning over and over again each time I load a save game. Maybe there are other enemies which do the same, I don't know (but so far I haven't noticed).
  12. Very cool! Have you done any optimisation passes, guys, perchance? I think my game is running more smoothly than before.
  13. Update: It seems in new beta patch this bug has been fixed (hopefully). Thanks guys and Aarik in particular, keep it up!
  14. It is surprisingly hard to come with good name in that relative short time that you have when you get notice that you need to sent it in. Especially when when developers haven't released much of information about world or its lore in that point of time. Some backers did have conversations with Josh about lore and names used in Eora, but not all. I would guess that there would had been more setting fitting names if Obsidian had released general naming guide for Eora that backers could had looked before they sent their NPCs in. I didn't do any backer content for PoE, but I did do them in InXile's Torment: Tides of Numenera, and I had quite hard time to come up with good name for my content even though I have setting book in my hand and I have played Numenera as table top rpg. Luckily for people that will play that game I got some help from its developers, so my content isn't as awful as it would had been without their input. Leaving aside dubious "oh it's very hard to do so" argument... Guys from Obsidian had to approve these names, or else they wouldn't appear in-game in their current state. I doubt it was very hard to say "Dear backer, this name isn't really fitting with game lore, would you mind if we change submitted name of your NPC to something more adequate while keeping it similar, like this, for example?". Kickstarter page specifically said submitted names has to be "within reason". But whatever, I guess. Reaping what we sow and all.
  15. For me, the problem with backer NPC lies mostly with their names. They break fourth wall like nobody's business. Come on, guys, was it so hard to give them something lore-friendly, instead of weakly disguised pastiches of real names and video game characters? I mean, Reirnu Xalxijrei? Really? What's next, Gearaldo From Reavaia? Macks Paiihn? Ryuyu Hayabuzza? Johhnei Smid? Jane Doo?
  16. I've noticed this thing when my character was level 8 or so. When you level up and try to take any talent EXCEPT companion-related (Merciless, Resilient and so on), one of existing talents gets overwritten by new one. If you take four companion-related talents (and only them), however, it's fine. But sooner or later they end, and you're forced to take another one - and, well, inevitably experience this issue. Here's a screenshot before level up: Notice I have all 4 companion talents, so I can't "workaround" this anymore. Now here's a screenshot after level up. Here, I've taken Gunner and, as you can see, Gunner replaced Vicious Companion. I believe this issue affects Sagani as well. I'm playing on 3.0 beta. On 2.0 this issue persists as well. I'm not using any mods. Renewing cache didn't help either.
  17. From time to time, brown frame around abilities above portraits now just disappears. I think it mostly happens in Caed Nua, for some reason. Restarting the game seemingly fixes the problem. But this happens mostly randomly so I don't know if this issue could be reliably reproduced.
  18. Yeah, the more I play the more I see this. I mean, Engagement itself is fine, but Disengagement Attacks right now are almost completely useless - all they do is hinder, impede the movement and generally just get in the way.
  19. I have a bad feeling about this. Being forced to choose buff at each rest is rather repetitive and does not bring gameplay i like. It is boring. Imho there should be easier solution, like: Survival - increase potion, food duration AND gives bonus to healing effects on us. If that is not enought: +Give some small elemental resistance. I simply would prefer passive buff, which leaves more time for real play. What WorstUsernameEver said, actually - I forgot to mention this. You're not required to assign bonuses each and every time, you can just leave it to default (which incurs +2DR, I believe, but could be different, I guess, depending on Survival) and simply click "OK", like usual. What you're describing here basically makes me feel like injuries are working as designed. A binary difficulty system like the IE games subtly encourages mediocre tactics, and overstates the effectiveness of damage spells or spells with easy saves. Because complete wipes and one party member dying are treated the same way and have the same result, it gets harder to differentiate bad tactics. Meanwhile, your only recourse is to start the same fight over again, but because of the RNG the same mediocre tactics can have wildly different results. So the lesson from one character dying isn't you need to change strategies, it turns into ride the RNG until you win. Cast ice storm until it gets max damage, or harm until it gets past spell resistance, etc. Injuries show that you had bad tactics, but encourage you to keep going. They also help emphasize different characters in the party by making the injured one less useful. My offtanking and positioning got much better once Eder racked up a couple injuries in a dungeon I shouldn't have been in. Similarly, I tested out the reloading chant once Kana had been injured. On a related but different note, reloading is not the only way to induce challenge. Yes, I guess if there's no difference between one member and full party, that's not too good. Thing is, I'm not campaigning for Injuries to inflict permadeath, that's the whole point. They should encourage, yes - and the only difference is, instead of showing that you should fight better very "softly", they should really drive the point home, so to speak. With fairly harsh penalties, however, not the death of PC. They are optional, so I don't really see any harm in experimenting. If this proves too harsh, the effect could always be rolled back to starting values. Because right now it shows, yes, but that is it. Like I said, more of a psychological effect than a gameplay one. I should also probably mention I'm not saying "it should be just like IE". Not at all. I just used IWD as a convenient example.
  20. Some VERY, VERY quickfire thoughts on some (but not all) aspects of 3.00 patch, so keep this in mind: 1. Main screen - new, cool, thanks, guys! 2. More transparent breakdown of stats - also cool, very useful for builds, so far didn't notice any bugs. 3. Action icons on portraits - I'm not really sure about this one. Since player always looks on battlefield directly, action icons over character heads are far more useful, since you can see all at a glance, instead of always lowering eyes to portraits. PoE combat is very quick, sometimes even split-second can matter, so there's simply is not enough time for that. YMMV, of course. But as long as it remains an option which can be disabled, well... 4. Injuries... Well... It's very hard to breakdown, honestly. Especially in quickfire analysis. But let's try... They ARE good and they need to stay in the game PERIOD, there's that. The problem is - since PoE combat is not very hard, except on PotD, they hit hardest only when they multiply, i.e. one character falls time after time without resting. And even when they do hit, they all rectified instantly with simple resting. Their effect so far is not very noticeable, so you can freely allow yourself to fall, just like before. That's my main gripe with the game combat overall - because of the health system, you effectively have 6 extra lives against just one in IWD, for example. Meaning - in IWD fight could be called dangerous if you could lose just one fighter in it, since player reloads immediately and restarts, resetting progress completely. Here, fight could be called dangerous only when there's direct risk of full party wipe instead of one member. Which means - since injuries can be rectified instantly and their effect is noticeable only when they multiply since the combat is not really hard, they need to hit harder, I think. Much harder, maybe even. You already have two very easy difficulty modes, now when Story Time is included, so I think something could be done for players that want some challenge. And every PoE player WILL get better over time, even someone who is not good with mechanics so there's that. But even then it will only force resting, so I don't know, really. They ARE good for some players like me who can't stand seeing even slight penalty on stats, since this will psychologically force them to fight better so they won't see it, ever. So that's something, I guess. And BTW, this brings me to my next point... 5. Rest mechanics. The same players (but not me this time) probably will also now avoid the resting, since now it involves fairly long process of selecting beneficial effects each time when you press the rest button. So the game will become harder for them, in a very roundabout way. It's not hard to do, for me at least, so I don't mind. And it's better than it was before, because Survival now actually does something. But I've got some vague feeling there will be complaints that "it's too long doing that every time" or something. Again, for me, it's cool. My problem is different - these bonuses make fairly easy combat even easier. Easier combat mean less Injuries. And Injuries so far are not too noticeable. So again, I think, for Injuries to work, they really need to hit hard. Meaning, after receving two or three characters should already barely walk. They are optional, after all, if you don't like them - disable them, so you can "go wild" with them. 6. FINALLY SCALING TEXT ON LOADING SCREENS, HOORAY!!! ... I think. I guess this is it for now. All changes ARE good and NEED to stay, I can say this much already. Maybe some other Pillars players can comment/add something?
  21. I don't know if this could be called "bugs", but there you go. Didn't know where should I post this, so... First, elemental prism "puzzle" on Od Nua 7th level. I think this issue has already been mentioned multiple times, but still... As far as I understand it, you're supposed to put prisms onto appropriate pedestals, then activate pedestal in front of the door to the next floor for it to open. But as it stands, there's no need for it - the door opens fine either way, with or without prisms in their respective places. Installing prisms just ignites the "blight-forge" and that's it. No secret doors open, no messages appear, no nothing. So maybe it is a bug that needs fixing? Not that fixing it will add much, honestly - just little more running around, but logic is logic, what can you do. Or maybe there IS some connection that flew over my head and something will change? I completed the game on release and it was there, now I'm playing with 2.03 version and it's still persists. Second issue regarding Kana's quest. Not really a bug, but also somewhat logic-breaking, I guess. Upon completion of "Time and Tide", you're supposed to take Master Staircase, return to the 1st level of Od Nua through secret door and when you do exactly that, you'll meet an ambush and fighting ensues. But that's only if you take Master Staircase and go to the 1st floor of Od Nua - if you skip it and go directly on the surface through the "chapel trapdoor" OR use regular stair, it's perfectly possible to skip the fight altogether, so clueless assassins will remain standing there forever until you literally "stumble" upon them (this actually happened on my 1st playthrough). But this makes little sense, since this fight serves as an "epilogue" to the quest and directly underlines it, reinforcing Kana's motive to follow the Watcher. Maybe this could be rectified somehow? Make them spawn in accordance to player's method of return so you will always be ambushed no matter which way you took? Now that I think about it, it reminds me of Colonel Tobin fight in (unpatched?) KotOR 2. Very similar - you're SUPPOSED to meet him so he could provide necessary backstory and alternative solution to main quest. But for some reason he instead spawns inside some random room and you could perfectly complete the location without ever interacting with him, or even knowing he was there.
  22. I'm a firm believer that everything (systemic-wise) that makes player directly calculate the odds dramatically improves overall experience, since it completely eliminates the "let's click this & that, guess something is probably improved, moving on" way of thinking. Specifically, it would be nice if we finally saw a detailed breakdown on Security & Prestige ratings. Right now, both numbers are vague to the extreme - you see them rise, sure, but you don't actually know what they exactly do except "uh, the more the better, I guess". When you upgrade both ratings, can you actually say with confidence you know exactly what will change? Now, the whole system is built on probabilities (I think so, at least). Merchants may or may not arrive at the castle, bandits may or may not attack, so showing the percentage (there s a 56% probability Very Fearsome Enemy will attack, JUST SO YOU KNOW!!!) would be silly, of course. But I think instead of that, they could change the outcome display. If you increase Prestige, for example, the game will show you the exact number of taxes and money collected (bandits will take some of it, but increasing the security rating, conversely, will decrease this to a certain threshold, within reason). With Security, however, it's noticeably harder, since again, all is based on a probabilities and there's not much you can do to correctly display this without looking too gamey and unnatural. Theory (it's hard to do so yeah, not that it's possible, but still): I guess you can attach two statuses to keep. One displays potential threat level. Safe--Dangerous and something in-between. Another displays keep "protection" status. Secured--Dilapidated and something in-between. This way the player directly sees the effect of Security rating instead of "uh, now that I raised it to 40, am I finally safe?". Maybe even simpler. When number crosses the certain threshold, the icon changes its background, from red to yellow to green or something. Although this color solution carries some inherent drawbacks, I suppose - for one, red color implies some urgency and/or emergency when there isn't one, since stronghold maintenance in PoE is fairly subdued and calm affair. So this will probably irritate some players. The palette could be different - from gray to green to golden, for example. Your thoughts/suggestions? If you were to increase mechanic transparency of these statuses, how would you do it? Sorry for some choppy English.
×
×
  • Create New...