Abel
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Posts posted by Abel
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No, i guess it's probably more about hand holding for people who stubbornely refuse to use their brain, because they never tried to do so. Reaching level cap mid game serves the same purpose.
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Well, Josh definitely is a great designer. He has lots of great ideas, great imagination, and the ability to come up with things only he could come up with.
But at the same time, the only game he designed i loved was New Vegas (with its mandatory hardcore mode, which should have been the base rule, really). Because even the game mechanics were a vast improvement over the crappy Fallout 3. The problem i have with Sawyer has nothing to do with his actual skills. More about the choices he made. I don't know if he disccussed with Urquhart the goals for the game, and if the CEO actively asked for the game to be more appealing to masses, or if Sawyer actually felt doing it this way was for the best. But in the end... *sigh*. I had hoped Obsidian would become the guidepost on how to craft great RPGs, with mechanics well grounded into the world itself, and great writting, rather than just patched over the game and labelled as "here is an obvious game mechanic, but well, it's for convenience, so it's ok".
As an example, i would have expected crafting to be a thing in the world itself, with lore, NPCs, recipes, dedicated shops, and such. Rather than just a lame UI with "click there, and it will do magic" oO. So many game features are done this way, it hurts... so much.
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I must say, the art really is gorgeous.
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Yeah I agree. I found the writing quite terrible in deadfire. Playing beast of winter was like playing a completely different game written by different people.
I did not feel attached to the main plot at all. In fact I felt quite detached from it and surprised at how ridiculous the plot was the more the game unfolded.
The pillars world was just not interesting and the companion banter was terrible.
Fortunately the rest of the game more then made up for these short comings and the experience overall was excellent. If they do a poe3 I hope they get a new writing team.
To be fair the problem is not the writing team, they did their best. The issue is open world, obs being far too ambitious with too many major changes, so not enough resources, the focus being on everything but the writing, something had to give. I think they did as best they could with the time available, but clearly Sawyer had many other priorities from the start and didn’t really place any importance on the narrative.
They are still good writers, and given support would show it. Deadfire isn’t a bad game per se, and many people would like it. I’m just disappointed because I was promised a sequel to POE whereas we got a direct sequel to SOZ. Again some people might like that, but plenty of gaming companies make good open world games. Very few if any can pull off the writing and atmosphere in the burning bridge (BOW) or Ondras temple in White March. So I have higher expectations for Obs and it’s disappointing to see an open world which frankly many companies can produce.
Honestly, i feel, since the start, that Obs took inspiration in all these brainless 3D so-called RPG there is out there.
-Emphasis on graphics and such rather than writting: check
-Open World feel: check
-Easy combat allowing even the most lazy players to steamroll everything: check
-Maxed out level half game in order to allow those who don't want to waste time doing side quests to steamroll the end game anyway: check
-Convenience features and accessibility for those who feel they should be able to grind everything without having to care much about managing resources (because, you lose time while steamrolling everything: >>>> example: auto heal): check
-Game mechanics centered around combat rather than Roleplaying (even though it's a RolePlaying Game): check
-Easy, fast and dumb main plot, in order for it to be easily understood/completed for even the dumbest idiot in the world: check
They tried to give the illusion they made the game for the core backers, while, at the same time, trying to reach worldwide mass market by using the same means as Bethesda and co. It was a complicated bet. But the danger here, is once they reach the point where they do not need backer's money to fund their next project anymore (hence reaching the independency they're striving for), they will feel the urge for the game to be successful, in order to stay independant. How do you think they will achieve that? To me it's pretty obvious. They won't take much risk anymore and try to sell their crap to as many people as possible. Which basically means: they will opt for EA's politics. That's how i see things, and what i said when PoE 1 first came out.
This makes me question the whole crowfunding system. I think that this alternate system can actually only work if the studio uses Kickstarter for each and every of his games. The development being already paid for. They won't have to appeal to mass market and can actually focus on delivering a proper game experience for the people who paid for it. Trying to satisfy everyone is the guarantee you will make a shallow work. Mozart composed his requiem after some noble ordered it for his defunct wife. If Mozart had to compose it in order to satisfy 7 billion uneducated people, i bet the Requiem would never have reached such heights. And Beethoven would have never composed the "hammerklavier".
Although, i don't know if i'm able to convey my thoughts properly in english.
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I admit it, i did not play Deadfire. But i kind of feel like the adjectives used here are borderline excessive. I understand how the main plot can be seen as badly brought to the player, especially since the sense of urgency kind of clashes with the need to explore the game in order to level up. I will agree, this is a problem. The same problem existed in BG2 regarding Imoen's rescue at Spellhold, though probably not to this extent, since there is still the excuse of the money you need to gather, and you still can complete some areas after Spellhold (though at this time, there is Bodhi to take care of, and i can't really imagine spending 2 months crawling in dungeons before taking of her, either). And then, there is the god banters. I did not read them. I'm curious now.
But well, is everything really that bad, including side quests, areas' lore and such? Fallout 4 writing is completely idiotic (read a lot about it). But it's Bethesda, so no surprise here. Even though i 've read quite a few people here explaining that the writing at Obs is running downhill since a few years, i suspect that part of the reason why the judgement is so harsh is that everyone expects more from Obs when it comes to the writting, than from rotten studios like Bethesda.
I am wrong?
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Also, you're not speaking objectively when you say it's the best isometric RPG you can play right now. I don't think that can be judged objectively. I for one find Pathfinder: Kingmaker more promising, but it does need quite a bit of patching before I start playing it properly. (And if you don't like P:K, that's fine, but it's still subjective.)
Kingmaker is done? That's a good piece of news. I need to find some kind of review. I thought about buying it, actually. I felt it suits me more than Pillars.
EDIT: Hope there is a GOG option. No way i will buy on Steam.
You can get it on GOG just fine.
Yeah
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Also, you're not speaking objectively when you say it's the best isometric RPG you can play right now. I don't think that can be judged objectively. I for one find Pathfinder: Kingmaker more promising, but it does need quite a bit of patching before I start playing it properly. (And if you don't like P:K, that's fine, but it's still subjective.)
Kingmaker is done? That's a good piece of news. I need to find some kind of review. I thought about buying it, actually. I felt it suits me more than Pillars.
EDIT: Hope there is a GOG option. No way i will buy on Steam.
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What are the things you’d like to see?
Already talked about it, i won't rince and repeat, so in a nutshell:
-Good ol' Might Attribute which i want to see dead once and for all.
-Per encounter crap/auto heal after combat, which seems to reflect pretty well what Blizzard had in mind while developping their hack n slash "Diablo 3" ("Players should feel powerful" and "Nothing should get in the way while killing things")
I can bear with everything i dislike, but these. It's already patch 3.0, so i guess that's it for the little hope i still had.
1. might: wow did you even play poe1?
2. auto heal: wow did you even play poe1?
per-encounter - yeah that ship sailed a long time ago. no way they're just patching that away.
Well, as i said somewhere, i could never play past Act 2 ^^ (though i've spent 150H just playing 2 acts). I got stuck quite a long while on the character creation page, too, and much more while playing afterwards, trying to figure out what to do with this crap, before coming up with a totally unsatisfying compromise which i could not make do. But yeah, chances for them to patch things now are pretty inexistant. I agree on this. Especially since they solved the Might Attribute problem during beta, before reverting to previous system.
I probably won't follow much Obs anymore, but it's still nice to see them improving the game like they did with the first one. Hope they can remain independant and not follow Bioware's path.
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I did not play the game, and may never play it. But i second people saying that supporting indies is important these days. It was my first reason to back the game by the way, even though i pretty much knew already that i would be disappointed by the design choices (neglecting roleplaying aspects even more). While reading you, you seem to be much into combat and character builds. If so, and according to all what i've read about the game here and there, you will probably enjoy Deadfire, since, as far as i'm concerned, it's pretty much what you would expect from a good a-rpg. Especially since multiclassing opens a whole new world, and combat seems not as clunky as in Pillars 1.
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What are the things you’d like to see?
Already talked about it, i won't rince and repeat, so in a nutshell:
-Good ol' Might Attribute which i want to see dead once and for all.
-Per encounter crap/auto heal after combat, which seems to reflect pretty well what Blizzard had in mind while developping their hack n slash "Diablo 3" ("Players should feel powerful" and "Nothing should get in the way while killing things")
I can bear with everything i dislike, but these. It's already patch 3.0, so i guess that's it for the little hope i still had.
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Good to see the game is still tweeked and improved. This is the kind of things that help customers trust in developers.
Still, as a personal note, i don't have much hope to see one day, in the patch notes, the 2 things i would like to see. I may, or may not reclaim my key one day. As it is, i really do not feel any urge to play Deadfire, or even finish Pillars 1 (replaying BG). But Wasteland 3 is for next year, probably, so... not everything is lost.
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That would have solved the imbalance there was in first game where evil deeds where rewarded while good were not. If this was the idea behind this cut perk, i may consider adding it with console at some point, since i never sacrificed anyone.
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It is so very very immersion breaking that my characters have transdimmensional pockets and can carry all and everything.
Finally found a friend here
. I agree to your post, and especially agree to the bit i quoted. That's why i suggested the stash should have some in-game lore and an actual implementation in the game world. I would add some things, although i did not play the game yet, i've read a lot of things in these forums. Once again, it's from an immersion, roleplay pespective.-In game implementation of crafting. Make crafting an actual thing in the game world. Not just some UI.
-Create some incentive to rest. Not for healing purposes. Adding a fatigue mechanic would be great in my opinion.
-Do not allow auto-healing. Healing should require spells, potions, or non-magical means of some sort. Go see a healer of some kind, or use party abilities in AND outside of combat. For convenience purposes, allow an option to auto cast healing spells outside of combat for people too lazy to do it themselves.
-Stash has already been mentioned.
-I would personaly like special ammunitions to come back. Stack of 100 would be ok (compared to 40 in BG). I consider special ammunitions to be at the same time fun, and implying some kind of resource management i love in RPGs.
-Help dungeon crawling to make sense. I want to feel endangered while exploring a dungeon. I don't want to rest inside it. I don't want for my spells to be back after every fights, or to be healed automatically.
-Get rid of the injury system. If a character is knocked down, it's perma death, unless you can cast some resurrect spell. Even doing it would imply some downside for the caster. I think the way restauration spells worked in IE games was fine (caster tired after casting the spell). No perma debuff for downed character as it would only ask for reloading.
-Well, obviously, i would repeat it here but... get rid of this 09%%£¨% !!! Might attribute. Can't even say how much i hate it.
-Allow me to prepare my party before adventuring. Check potions. Check ammunitions. Check food. Check resting stuff. Check limited-use items. All ok? well... Now let's take a deep breathe in and... go!
-Make combat significant. Even trash mobs should have their importance. If there is an auto heal, or a way to rest spam, these trash mobs will become just boring. They can make sense only if they have some kind of effect on the general state of the party, implying that depending on how well this trash encounter was handled, the next will be easier or harder. In short they should ahve long term importance in resource management. Which is impossible with the way things are designed in Pillars 2 right now.
-Characters should not be able to rest again after a whole night sleep. Hard to sleep again and again if you're not tired, right? Add the same thing that was in Fallout2: an option to WAIT for XX hours.
-Don't put dragons in the game, unless our characters are lvl 25. Dragons should not be made so casual.
-Don't reward only ****. Give perks as a reward not only for evil feats, but for good, too. Pillars 1 only rewarded the **** (Gift from the Machine, the Pit)
-Makes NPCs like commoners and guards more reactive when a battle happen near them. Not just acting like nothing was happening at all.
-Develop melee classes so that their abilities reflect better their increased talents in actual swordmanship and combat proficiencies, instead of Diablo III's moves. The better they handle their weapons, the better they can overcome their opponent. It should be more about skill.
-Allow more self buffs for priests, or even druids. I want to play a war priest. One that plunge into the fray with his faith as a weapon. Priests should not be only about party buffs. There should be some ways to specialize in either self combat buff, healing, or party support.
May be some more, but that's all i can come up with right now.
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I still think POE 2 storyline have regressed a lot. POE 2 should be more like an actual crpg. Feels like Obsidian wanted to make an open world game and failed.
Hey, hey, it's a thank you thread :D.
Let's just say thank you where it belongs, and ''i don't like this'' in some other threads. There are plenty of them already.
So, my turn: Thank you, Obs, for being one of the last studio to still beautifully handcraft party based, iso with paint over RPGs. It's really beautiful, way more than Wasteland or Divinity. I hope that Obs, InXile and such other studios will help players who did not experience the last Golden Age of CRPGs (end of the 90's) understand what was great about them, compared to nowadays'. And that this will end up opening a new Golden Era, with complex, deep and punishing RPGs (like in: GAME OVER can happen).
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It's fine to have commoners and guards strolling around. It's much needed to make the world alive. Even more so since Obs apparently made a wondeful job giving them AI routines (best feature ever). Defiance Bay felt empty and hardly lively because there was not enough of them, even though the town was supposed to be full of refugees (the very Californian like avenues, waaaaaayy too wide, added to this feeling of emptiness, when more clustered buildings, in a very medieval fashion, would have helped solving it). So it's a great thing Obs corrected the Defiance Bay problem with Pillars 2.
But when the kind of things described in this thread happens, it just makes everything look silly, and pretty much ruin the wonderful job done with AI routines. Commoners fleeing combat zones, guards that make decisions and are not just for flavor. This is the kind of reactivity needed for immersion purpose. I seem to remember that more than once, guards in BG1 and 2 would somehow react to this kind of situation (though, in a stereotyped way: they basically attacked the party who intiated combat i guess. Sometimes they would just stand there, too, which is bad), and that commoners would run away in Fallout 1 and 2. Need to replay these games for the XXXXth time to be sure.
Hope they will fix that sometime along the patching process.
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I may be wrong, but maybe it's because combat has not ended? I'm not sure how to solve this. The only solutions i can imagine would be to end combat by having your MC get killed or kill the ennemies, or manage your party members and kick those who are knock down. But, in Iron Mode, being killed just wouldn't do, right? And i don't think you are allowed to manage your party in such a situation.
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!! I just booted up the game to check the invocation: The Thunder Rolled Like Waves on Black Seas, and it IS an offensive invocation.
I have definitely killed a couple of enemies with this empowered ability (i.e. yes, the Empower counter went down and yes, since I soloed, killed by the Warcher)
I give up........this makes no sense
Worst case scenario, there may be a console command to level up soulbound weapons. If i'm not mistaken, there was such commands in Pillars 1. I think there is a thread somewhere, listing them for Pillars 2.
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i’d like it if Obsidian would return to gameplay that doesn’t completely evolve around using abilities. In the old ie games i would search through my inventory like scroll cases or potions or think of moving my units around and using terrain. The rts gameplay to me worked wonderfully with the per-rest system, it encouraged me to find different ways of handling encounters. I think it’s a pity that Obsidian invested a great amount of effort in creating loads of potions and other consumables and also terrain design but because of my abilities fully replenishing automatically after battles i’m not encouraged to use the a.m. Now the modern games are kind of ‘load the player with abilities and load the opposition with numbers’. That, together with countering not being as much of a factor as in BG2 makes deadfire combat ok in a Dragon Age-kind of way which is good if you like DA combat, i definitely prefer BG2 though. Isometric party-rpg has more potential than providing ability-centered gameplay.
Yeah, for me too, the old IE way is still the best possible ^^. I never enjoyed combat in any RPG as much as i did in BG1 and BG2. Probably because i never abused mechanics when possible. If i had the courage to find a way to try to install anew BG Trilogy with some other mods without destroying the install, i would rather play BGT once more, rather than Pillars. And when it came to resources management, priests were the best. I miss the old health system and priests healing outside combat so much, it hurts
.Give Big World Setup a go.
I'm replaying BG myself and compared to regular Trilogy or Tutu (which I used to play BG with) the Big World thingy is incredibly easy to use.
Oh? Is it possible to install mods like Secret of Bonehill or 1Pixel Productions on top of it? I have quite the list of mods i would like to install. But i always ended up with a broken install.
Et ce, malgré l'aide que j'ai trouvée sur les forums de la "Couronne de Cuivre" ^^
You can always try, Big World will list incompatibilities so it's probably your best bet to get a working modded game. Plus it's a pretty convenient tool.
Tu devrais essayer!
I will take note of this. And read about it sometime. I really need one, definite install of BG since i will always play it.
Grand merci
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As far as my personal experience is concerned, to make an example, the camping supply mechanic in Pillars of Eternity was not an incentive to keep dungeon-crawling while injured, out of spells, or otherwise not at the apex of my power. Limiting camping supplies merely made rest-spam tedious in real life as I had to backtrack every time I needed more, but the game still allowed it consequence free if I was willing to be appalled outside of it. All this encouraged for me was cheating so I could get the supplies without backtracking.
@Abel, if your immersion is irked by invisible hats and unexplained bottomless boxes, how does it handle that a party of 6, already lugging an army's worth of arms and armor around, is only capable of carrying two bundles of firewood, despite this functionally being the most powerful resource in the entire world? Doesn't that seem a bit arbitrary?
You are exactly right. I never said i liked the Pillars 1 system, either. I'd still rather have Pillars 1 system over Pillars 2, though. Like i said, i'm not irked, personally, by invisible hats
. But i can understand why one would be. But well, the whole point was not really about a matter of personal preferences. Personnal preferences are besides my point. -
I think people here (not everyone, certainly) will agree on the idea that games like Fallout 4, or DA II and III have lost many important things over time.
And how is hat hiding representative of this trend? Did it replace some more involved, intricate hat-visibility system? Exactly what is being lost here?
I think the true debate actually lies here since the very start
. Thanks for your input. I'm not sure myself about the answer to that. I would say some other mechanics in Pillars games are representative of this trend to me. The hide hats things can probably be considered in one way or another, depending on the person. Even though i'm not sure myself, i can see how some here can see it as representative of the same trend, too.But the reason i'm not sure myself is that even though it looks like ''get all avantages whithout the inconveniences'', at the same time, it is not a game mechanic that replaced some other older systems in order to make things more convenient for the player. Making things more convenient is not a bad thing in itself, but it tends to become one for me when all it does is cutting things considered by some as tedious. "Why keep a health system? It only forces players to heal their characters manually, let's just auto heal". But the problem here is that, they did not only removed the hassle to heal a character manually. They took away health/resource management at the same time, like it was nothing. And i think here lies the problem, and here starts the slippery slope. Especially when people will explain me that this system is fine, because it removes the hassle of manual healing, without even considering what it is we lost along with the said hassle.
In short, i tend to believe that there is a thin line between quality of life improvements, and dumbed down mechanics. Line that many RPGs these days have happily crossed long ago.
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i’d like it if Obsidian would return to gameplay that doesn’t completely evolve around using abilities. In the old ie games i would search through my inventory like scroll cases or potions or think of moving my units around and using terrain. The rts gameplay to me worked wonderfully with the per-rest system, it encouraged me to find different ways of handling encounters. I think it’s a pity that Obsidian invested a great amount of effort in creating loads of potions and other consumables and also terrain design but because of my abilities fully replenishing automatically after battles i’m not encouraged to use the a.m. Now the modern games are kind of ‘load the player with abilities and load the opposition with numbers’. That, together with countering not being as much of a factor as in BG2 makes deadfire combat ok in a Dragon Age-kind of way which is good if you like DA combat, i definitely prefer BG2 though. Isometric party-rpg has more potential than providing ability-centered gameplay.
Yeah, for me too, the old IE way is still the best possible ^^. I never enjoyed combat in any RPG as much as i did in BG1 and BG2. Probably because i never abused mechanics when possible. If i had the courage to find a way to try to install anew BG Trilogy with some other mods without destroying the install, i would rather play BGT once more, rather than Pillars. And when it came to resources management, priests were the best. I miss the old health system and priests healing outside combat so much, it hurts
.Give Big World Setup a go.
I'm replaying BG myself and compared to regular Trilogy or Tutu (which I used to play BG with) the Big World thingy is incredibly easy to use.
Oh? Is it possible to install mods like Secret of Bonehill or 1Pixel Productions on top of it? I have quite the list of mods i would like to install. But i always ended up with a broken install.
Et ce, malgré l'aide que j'ai trouvée sur les forums de la "Couronne de Cuivre" ^^
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Probably because i never abused mechanics when possible.
I guess the answer was already somewhere in there. I never played a BG in per/encounter. Would be plain boring anyway.
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i’d like it if Obsidian would return to gameplay that doesn’t completely evolve around using abilities. In the old ie games i would search through my inventory like scroll cases or potions or think of moving my units around and using terrain. The rts gameplay to me worked wonderfully with the per-rest system, it encouraged me to find different ways of handling encounters. I think it’s a pity that Obsidian invested a great amount of effort in creating loads of potions and other consumables and also terrain design but because of my abilities fully replenishing automatically after battles i’m not encouraged to use the a.m. Now the modern games are kind of ‘load the player with abilities and load the opposition with numbers’. That, together with countering not being as much of a factor as in BG2 makes deadfire combat ok in a Dragon Age-kind of way which is good if you like DA combat, i definitely prefer BG2 though. Isometric party-rpg has more potential than providing ability-centered gameplay.
Yeah, for me too, the old IE way is still the best possible ^^. I never enjoyed combat in any RPG as much as i did in BG1 and BG2. Probably because i never abused mechanics when possible. If i had the courage to find a way to try to install anew BG Trilogy with some other mods without destroying the install, i would rather play BGT once more, rather than Pillars. And when it came to resources management, priests were the best. I miss the old health system and priests healing outside combat so much, it hurts
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For me it's just a bad mechanic. I never saw a good implementation of cooldown-on-ability and the fundamental idea also seems to be flawed. Ability A gets used and has a 12 sec cooldown till you can use it again - but you don't face any pause if you just use ability B that has a 6 second cooldown - then C with 6 and rinse and repeat. Horrible. This leads to the opposite situation that we have in Deadfire (and that I also don't like). In Deadfire abilities compete for Discipline/Guile/Bond etc. So you don't want to pick too many of them. In Tyranny you wanted to pick as many actives as possible to circumvent cooldown.
Both variants aren't great but I prefer the first. If you then find a way to refresh resources (Wounds, Focus, Flesh Communion, Brilliant etc.) things get interesting.
Well, it's a mechanical point of view. I will trust you about this. You're way better than me with things like that.
The best for me would be a system that makes combat feel natural. Like in not "in ya face just 'coz" and like in "smooth". I have no idea how to achieve this. I actually think Skyrim made a good attempt. There was "Silver", too in the 90's. This game basically allowed your character to move and fight according to the movements of your mouse. Well, it was not really a RPG ^^.
Even though i dislike cooldowns for the same reasons as you, i think DA:O felt more natural regarding warrior combat's style, since abilities were more about apt swordsmanship than "Boom boom moves". That's why i thought stacking the cooldowns instead of having a separate one for each ability could be a good starting idea. But i'm no game designer, i trust you will immediately see problems or possibilities i won't be able to see unless i test the whole thing myself (i'm not trolling you. I really believe this). Regarding this. You're seeing the matter from a mechanical perspective it seems, while i see it more from an immersive perspective. But still, looks like even so, we can agree on some things, which i think is great.
Thanks for this 
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Poor documentation: an ability description poor beyond belief
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by Abel
English is definitely not my first langage and still, i completely agree with you. I was about to give pretty much the same example as you about how the tooltip should have been writen in order to make it clear.
It's strange to see that even english native speakers seem to, somehow, fail to recognize poor english for what it is. My own english is still far from perfect, but pretty often, i kind of have to correct sentences i read in order to make them understandable (not on this forum though). It strikes me as weird. More than once, i was told by an english person that my english was better than some native speakers'. At first, i definitely thought it was just some flattering. Pretty recently, i started to wonder if it was really just that...
Anyway, the tooltip looks confusing to me. Especially since we're quite used to the way they were done in Pillars 1. I think it's only fair to question the way the ability functions while reading it.