Abel
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Posts posted by Abel
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While it's true that EA cut some of Bioware's DA:O content that was already done in order to put it in the game later on (in a new, extremely poor way) in a purchasable DLC after launch, and that these crappy publishers ways are now pretty common, i'm pretty sure the files you came across while digging in Pillars 2 are about something completely different.
Like people said, BG, but Fallout 1 and 2, too, had tons of cut contents in the game files (Killap mod is actually pretty great for Fallout 2). I guess there could be many, many different reasons for these cuts. But i really don't believe Obs is trying to swindle their customers with this. Maybe some of this will be finished at a further date and included in the game. Most are probably about early ideas that did not make the cut in the final game for many different reasons, and karkarov speculated some possible ones for this. Also. Pillars 1 at release and Pillars 1 v3.5 are complete different beasts. The game improved a lot over time post release. If you never played Pillars 1 at release, you would not understand that your statement about the relative quality of both games right now is biased.
I certainly would have hoped that Pillars 1's playthrough matters more when importing the save into Pillars 2. While i did not tried Pillars 2 yet and never finished Pillars 1, it seems the impact on the character you import is not this big. You already start over level 1 and lose your group, your stronghold, the unic perks that finally gave your MC some uniqueness, and your equipement. I would have hoped that some specific items, and even the unic perks would survive the import, at least. I did not play an ass in Pillars 1. I never planned to get ''Gift from the Machine'' nor did i ever planned to sacrifice anyone in the pit. I would like to not be punished for that.
So, Tigranes (i guess), there are actually, some things OP reported that i, personally, would really like to see in the game. The gift is one of them.
Overall, i tend to like this kind of thread, always interesting to see what was cut. And like someone said, it could become great modders material, in the future.
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English-speaking people tend to be particularly poor when it comes to learning other languages. The funny side of this is that a shocking number of English-speaking people speak very, very poor English. So, they are fluent in no languages at all.
French are the same by the way. We are awfully bad with foreign langages, and the fact that everything is dubbed on TV or at cinema does not help, either. It's kind of hard, nowadays, to watch this chinese film in Chinese, with subtitles. *sigh*. The reason people like polish or northern europeans are impressive to me, is probably because they are not polluted since they were born with the idea that their native language is everything, like us, french, are. At least, i think so. The funny part of this, is that almost everyone seems ok with people coming to live in France, but never learning to speak a single french word in decades, implying that the french society now tries to translate french in their native langages for them to be at ease. LOL... Poor France...
And yes, i kind of know about this. Believe it or not, but altough my english is not this good yet, more than once, i met occasions when i had to set their english right... Or occasions where i watch a japanese series fansubed in english and the tanslation is using such a ****ing poor english, that i almost have to ignore it and just do with the original japanese audio whenever i can... When translators do not know about anything other than ''get'' or ''pull'', they will translate everything vaguely using these with affixes like ''through'', ''out'', ''up'', or whatever. Even english has many more specific words than just this.
Still, even if the translations of the games are awfull, there are still an awful lot of people that play it who don't get a single word of english. Even i tend to struggle a lot to play Pillars or Wasteland in English. I can do it, but tend to end up with a headache pretty fast. The writting is good. I learn new words a lot. But in the cases of people who don't understand english at all, even disrespectful, butchery translations are better than nothing. Though it hurts to admit it.
Like i said, Obsidian, InXile, and such companies need to stop being absorbed by their own navel. They sell copies of the game all over the world. The least they can do is make sure the translations do not insult their customers. They need to really care about more than just their little world in California.
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Well, I hardly ever heard about US guys actually trying to learn any foreign languages. I even saw, on the net, these guys arguing that any langage other than english has nothing to do in the game chats because everyone should speak english so that everyone understands what is said (wut?).
I'm french, i learnt (and still learning english, spanish and Japanese (though this one is a pain in the ass
)). I knew a 20 y o corean who spoke fluently 7 languages (french included). But US guys can hardly see any value in learning anything other than english. Even Obsidian releases its video updates without much care for non native speakers (speaking fast, not articulating), like they are assuming ''well, we are the world, you know, if anything, you should understand this". This kind of thing kind of gets of my nerves since many years. And InXile is the same, by the way. The state of french translation for Wasteland 2 was... it was not even insulting anymore past this point.I even started to wonder at how anyone could butcher a translation to this extent. I was amateur translator for some time: i know what it means to translate things in order to preserve the color of the original text. It's hard to do. But if US guys don't care about anything other than english, give the work to localized company. I'm pretty sure a german company would have some more respect towards english than US people have towards the rest of the world, and thus, would give a more serious job for the german translation. Were the translations done by US companies?
I did not try Pillars 2 yet, but Pillars 1 was awfully translated, to the point that sentences did not make any sense. To solve some quests, you had no choice but top switch langage to english in order to get what was going on. Sad to learn that Pillars 2 has suchs problems, too.
Guys should stop being absorbed by their own navel. LA has never been and will never be the center of the world. Sounds like a rant, and actually, it is.
Et ouais, le français est l'une des langue les plus riches (si compliquée) qui soient... La voir ainsi maltraitée, ce n'est pas juste insultant... C'est carrément déprimant...
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Hmmmm... Steam has always been pretty funky anyway. Their licence agreements are lot of fun, too. And for weird reasons, i have almost all my games on GOG, and did not purchase any Steam Game since 6 years (New vegas). Why is that? I wonder...
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I read quite a lot of posts here and there asking for Ydwin lately.
I don't think people ever stopped posting that they wanted Ydwin as a full companion.
Yep, thanks for the input. It's just that i try not to talk about things i don't have a clue about. I spent several months away from these forums, so i wouldn't know about this.
I recall that when first announced, some people immediately condemned Ydwin to be "a shallow pandering anime yandere waifubait, created to appeal to lowest common denominator" for commiting a capital offense of being a good-looking elven female - and that opinion kinda stuck with her for a LONG time.This. My memories were not wrong after all
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EDIT: double post. Why?
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So... I love her! Is there *any* chance that she can still be fleshed out to a full companion in a DLC? I would happily pay. My love for Aloth as a character was the primary reason I dropped +$200 on the kickstarter!
I kind of remember that the choice of Ydwin as the possible 8th companion (5M stretchgoal, never reached) induced quite a lot of bad reactions on this board. I'm not sure why but many things were assumed regarding the character, and many people did not really want her. I guess one complaint was that she felt, at first, unoriginal compared to the cast members and PoE1's. Correct me if i'm wrong (like always).
I read quite a lot of posts here and there asking for Ydwin lately. Well, i don't really need to bring any conclusion to my post. It's not about condemning people who trolled the character at the time, but well. The general change of opinions still kind of strikes me.
But... i want a cliched, grumpy dwarf, too (or 2, or 3 !). With a VA that does not sound like Mister Joe, Texas. Was a huge problem of the VA in original Pillars. Every NPC sounded like average Human Joe. Don't know how it is in Deadfire though.
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I always liked the idea of the multiclassed priest/fighter. But need some cool, quick cast self buffs to do so.
Also, i'm going to get killed by saying this, but regarding priests specifically, i would have liked a total vancian with pre selecting system. Reason is easy to understand (i think)... When i played pillars 1, while i chose each and every perk of my priest to be melee combat oriented (in order to simulate a multiclassed Priest/Fighter), i generally ended up casting spells that had nothing to do with my idea of the character, just because there were some other more OP options available all the time. As a result, i won combats, but felt always dissatisfied by myself for not being able to stick to my character concept. Preselecting my spells like i did in the old IE games would actually put me at ease, granted the priest class is designed in order to allow this kind of gameplay (self buffs were too limited in Pillars 1). I would actually need 2 priests in my party: 1 that is AoE, support dedicated, and 1 that is more like a "Divine Champion" (the multiclassed version, my MC).
I agree with the fact that priests need more spells. Having very situational ones is really OK. It was in BG. But you had a whole lot of different spells to chose from at each spell level. The very fact that the spells were per rest was actually helpful to me. Why is that? Because while you have a pool of like 5 spells/level to chose from in Pillars, you had 10 in BG. You could memorize this ''anti paralysis" spell once, and chose the rest of your spells from the 9 that were left. Since high wisdom granted more spells at low and mid tiers, memorizing these situational counters was not much of an hindrance. And the very existence of these situational options was not in the way like it is in Pillars. You barely ever needed to memorize very situational spells more than once. And this allowed more flexibility to the whole priest gameplay. In Pillars these situational spells are always there, and they take too much room in my spell list. Well, i think so, at least.
Ah well, finally, it is cliché, i will admit it easily. But a priest which is all about healing should not be regarded as a bad thing. I never considered clichés to be bad in their own right. They become bad things when badly used. That's all. I really think there was no need to reinvent the wheel for the sake to do so, for everything. It's a good thing to do so at times, a bad thing at others, i guess. Healing would make more sense without the auto healing after combat crap which i despise though.
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Thank for this. I actually thought about using it on my simulated multiclassed priestess/fighter. But Eothas does not really allow other one handers than flails (which are the worst ones in my opinion, especially against crush resistant foes), and priests in Pillars lack the self buffs BG ones had. Maybe i shouldn't have picked the Eothas perk, and relied on the accurate 1 thing of Spelltongue instead, but for a Eothas priestess, this did not felt right to me not to pick it. I wish i could try it out in Deadfire now that actual multiclassing is there.
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K... but Maia might be portrayed as an autonomous agent with personal convictions and a sense of her surroundings. She might not want to break up someone's relation. That's her action. I don't see this in any way as assuming monogamy, but even if it was, society is overwhelmingly monogamous. Yes people like to sleep around, but nobody want's their partner to do so. Society overwhelming favors treating people how they want to be treated, and while people object to monogamy for the political sound-bite almost nobody actually behaves that way. So even if it was assumed, it would be somewhat justified. It's further perfectly okay to write characters who uphold that standard and aren't simply fantasy husks that are shaped at the player's discretion.
Which doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to try. You just might not be successful.
You have got a point there.
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Like Injurai said, i guess monogamy and heterosexuality are generally the more common things. I did not play the game yet, but it may just be that Maia assumes monogamy. It is not necessarily the game that assumes so. Companions are companions because they have a background: beliefs, identity, and such, after all.
I, myself, always felt that my female character and Eder should get along very well. I was let down in the first game by the fact that i could not make things evolve between them. How would their relashionship end up to be? Nothing? Friendship? Hurt Eothas believers that would make them closers and end up like siblings? Lovers? I really hope the companion relashionship system will end up being refined enough so that things can turn out in several different ways and feel natural. This natural sense of development is something i look forward too.
I, personally, never wanted relationships in the DA:O way, where polygamy, bisexuality and crap like that is all over the place. Note that i have nothing against it. It's just that i think that when Bioware thought they NEEDED to put emphasis on polygamy and bisexuality, while developping a shallow relationship system, they utterly failed to provide anything that could make feel like the relationships developped in any natural way. Almost everyone in my group, be it male or female companions, wanted to date me if i gave them some crap items i found. I even question the actual intentions of the dog, actually...
For one, i have confidence Obs will not do this kind of crap with Deadfire. I always wanted romance. But not this way.
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Should shields really reduce your acc though?
You get grand acc bonus for single weapon, damage (*theoretically*) and reach from 2 handers, and lol 2 weapons = double damage anime.
Seems like shields might not reduce your acc at all, but could have been balanced around different defences: buckler = better deflection + parry, medium shield = some extra saves or whatever, largest = best against ranged weapons but penalty to Stride.
Wouldn't that make their usefulness too specific?
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BG had spells that could kill instanly several opponents (or your whole team) if you failed a save throw.
Yeah, that was fun. You're nearly at the end of a 15min fight, suddenly your opponent casts a bull**** spell and you have to reload.
Yeah, i was always fine with this. Though, i'm not quite sure any fights would last this long, aside from very important ones, like the one against Irenicus. Being able to OS a kobold on a crit was ok, too. Did not need to spend 3 minutes spaming auto attack like it is against xaurips. Matter of taste, certainly.
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Well i would agree that when i first played Pilars , i had kind of the feeling that fights were about weak exchanges of slaps:p. Spells were especially so. You had this wonderfull spell you could use twice a day, that would lower, let's say, will of the opponent by 5 for 3 seconds... \o/ By the time you cast your willed based spell to take advantage of the first one, the effect already ended.
BG had spells that could kill instanly several opponents (or your whole team) if you failed a save throw. Even the level 1 orb spell could petrify the target once caster is lvl 12. That was bad ass. Needed to reload quite often in the end. But i felt that everything was more significant. While it's true that if the IA could cast successfully an immobilize spell on 3 of your party members, you were pretty much doomed (since spell duration were so long, unles you prepared the right spells with one priest, which i always did actually (and it's the reason i loved priests so much while i dislike them in Pillars)). I kind of liked the idea that every one of the spell i memorized could influence things greatly. I never had this feeling in Pillars. With anything. This game combat is more like a war of attrition, often needing you to hit a mob countless times with your crappy flail to achieve anything. I don't especially like it, and it's not even rewarding since no XP and crappy loots are the rule.But it's just one of the many reasons i never finished the game. And it is not one of my worst gripes (still looking at you, magical healing nap and Might attribute).
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I wish I could use the tab key in real life to see who's worth my time.
Lool. I agree so much with this, it's sick.
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I was never able to find a way to use properly the rapier "Spelltongue" in Pillars 1. Altough the increasing of effect duration seemed quite powerful at first, i could only imagine it being usefull on some kind of multiclassed caster/fighter. Well, i never got past the end of Act 2 , and never played White March part II (and may never do so), which may not help. Even though my playthrough is about 150 or maybe 200 hours long right now. But well, i almost wrote a novella worth of entries in the the personal diary of my MC, which is quite time consuming
Still, if some base mechanics of Pillars 2 end up being changed along the way, i will probably try to play the game someday, and thus, give Pillars 1 another try. And may learn some new things while doing so.
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I use it on a Spellblade Aloth on PotD (where there are lots of enemies) and with high INT, a Ring of Overseeing and Aloth's armor I can attack up to five enemies often and usually three minimum. Depends on positioning though. I can also use Pull of Eora to create a ball of foes which I can all affect with stuff like Arterial Strike or Confounding Blind or so. Or even Devastating Blow (which is kind of cool with a low AoE dmg weapon because overkill is less of an issue). I also use Offensive Parry because Aloth as a wizard can reach very high defection with Mirrored Image/Wizards' Double/Arcane Veil and stacked deflection items. For me, the sword works still wonderfully well. But it certainly is more of a niche item now.
It's also still nice with Swift Flurry+Heartbeat Drumming and Stunning Blows by the way.
Looks like you need to be a "Builds God" to be able to use it properly. I very much like special items with special effects though. Pillars 1 lacked this at first. If i end up actually playing the game, i may be able to grasp enough about it to use this weapon really efficiently in my 23th playthrough. Which is actually fine by me. Because this means that there will always be something new for me to master in the game. Even in 10 years
. I will probably start using items with simple, flat out bonuses though.EDIT: Actually, true problem may be that if they're going to make such niche items like this, they need to make like, way more unique items as a whole. If i think about Pillars 1 or the Pillars 2 wiki, at the end of the day, they may lack a variety of more straightforward options, equipement wise.
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You should play Blood Bowl. And come back to the game once all 3 expansions are out. You will, then, probably, find some other fun ideas of characters that work, are balanced, along with a better game overall. Since Pillars is not Skyrim, patches are inevitable along the way. If it bothers you, just wait.
Though i guess everyone got your point by now. And i don't think anyone is trying to deny that it may, indeed, be a bother, depending on the person and the specifics. Since many people (me included) consider that patch balances are inevitable for such a complex game, there is not much to argue about the matter anymore: Obsidian certainly feels the same. There is no point anymore in arguing about whether patches are a good thing or not; either. They will come anyway. For sure. Only, just think of what you really want to do yourself now.
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1) Death to the Might Attribute
2) Death to auto healing
Short wish list, but these are 2 things that rebuke me from even playing the game. So, i will just check patchnotes as time goes. Hope never kills.
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A person who finds the whole patching/refinement cycle unbearable can always just wait. There's plenty of other fine games out there to enjoy.
Pretty much what i'm doing :D (still hoping for more significant mechanic changes, too)
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That is pretty much what i understood. Which would mean that the point of disagreement between you and others is simply in the way you consider things long term wise.
Maybe this is something you don't know, but Obsidian was in a big pinch before they started their kickstarter for the first game. Now, they finally have their own IP. It's unbelievably precious for them as a company. I strongly believe that they NEED people to look back at their work in a few years and think: ''yeah, it was great''. There is no publisher involved here. Obsidian, who was known for years as ''King of Bugs Company'' can't use any excuses as publishers tyranny anymore. They bet their very reputation on Pillars franchise. And thus, they need to make the game the best possible, even if they achieve this only in Pillars 3.5.
They can't allow this game to be just another AAA ''hastily done'', ''hastily realeased'', ''Barely post launch supported'', ''Immediately forgotten'' game.
When you look back at good old games, balance was definitely a huge problem. But Pillars can't rely on the forgiveness for nostalgia sake of their customers anymore.
At least, this is how i see the matter.
I think I see what you mean. If they create a game for specific audience, it is obvious that they will do what they can to cater to that audience so that they keep supporting them. Okay, that makes sense, I just feel like it might be a poor move from a marketing perspective. I'd be fine to be proved wrong on that, though. Time will tell.
Also, slightly off topic in case you aren't aware, neither POE1 nor POE2 was actually published by Obsidian. It was done by Paradox Interactive (Tyranny too) and Versus Evil respectively. This is, however, an extremely common practice and studios that actually develop and publish the games by themselves are very rare.
Not quite right. Paradox and Versus Evil only took care of distributing the game after release. The box copies. They had never anything to do with development of the game, nor they could influence it in any way. The publishers i talked about are the ones who pay for the game to be made and that have full power over everything during development, to the point that they can even change the whole genre of a game at their leisure, cancel it, or change a release date to be set 4 months earlier than previously planned (Zenimax did that to Obs with New Vegas, which is why the game was so buggy at release. Well considering that the bonus payment they promised to Obs for the game was dependent of the fact that New Vegas would reach a 90% ratings on metacritic or not at release, this release date change was pretty nasty lol. Though, this is something i read somewhere at the time on some online newspaper i guess, so, i still lack enough accurate and proved informations). But that is why many studios look for independence, i guess. After all, Obsidian was on the brink of being closed because of a major game cancellation by a publisher before their first kickstarter. Check this out for further details if interested (documentary: Road to Eternity). You may understand why they NEED their Pillars IP to last, and to be recognized even years from now, and thus, why they need to constantly improve it, even post release.
Pillars, Shadowrun, Wasteland, Divinity, and such games are under full control of their developers, not any publisher. That is what being independent developer means. This is a very important thing to grasp, because i you don't grasp this, you won't make any sense of what i said in my previous post.
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Lets please keep the discussion focused on the topic and not each other.
I'm fine with boring snide remarks, really. Please intervene if he starts roleplaying though
You can already re-spec and hopefully they will allow stat re-speccing eventually as well. I find it very hard to imagine that your character was irreparably made unplayable.
This is a gameplay issue. I covered that a few pages ago. Basically you start the game with a particular character, and with a specific playstyle. Now that playstyle is no longer possible because suddenly damage and survivability is gone. You can try to salvage the run by respeccing, but you are eg. stuck with a subclass that is literally hindering you and the game is no longer fun.
That is pretty much what i understood. Which would mean that the point of disagreement between you and others is simply in the way you consider things long term wise.
Maybe this is something you don't know, but Obsidian was in a big pinch before they started their kickstarter for the first game. Now, they finally have their own IP. It's unbelievably precious for them as a company. I strongly believe that they NEED people to look back at their work in a few years and think: ''yeah, it was great''. There is no publisher involved here. Obsidian, who was known for years as ''King of Bugs Company'' can't use any excuses as publishers tyranny anymore. They bet their very reputation on Pillars franchise. And thus, they need to make the game the best possible, even if they achieve this only in Pillars 3.5.
They can't allow this game to be just another AAA ''hastily done'', ''hastily realeased'', ''Barely post launch supported'', ''Immediately forgotten'' game.
When you look back at good old games, balance was definitely a huge problem. But Pillars can't rely on the forgiveness for nostalgia sake of their customers anymore.
At least, this is how i see the matter.
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Reading comprehension is not your strong suit I see. I shall reiterate using small words and sentences for your benefit: I did read the thread. I grasp the points made in it. I see merit in your core point. I agree with it in part. Your skill at making this point is atrociously bad.
You couldn't have given off a more neckbeardish vibe if you tried.
Such a great orator you are! To be fair to you though, your ability to so engagingly undermine your own position really impressed me. You're a hair's breadth away from a well-argued point on the one hand and demented ranting on the other, being able to maintain that fine balance is a rare feat indeed. I certainly wouldn't be able to match it.
lool. Just because, honestly, i laughed, sorry. Both of you are pretty great in some ways. It's troll and good humour at the same time. Made my day, thanks
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There is absolutely nothing fun in having to restart the game because a dumb patch just nerfed your fun character to the point of being uplayable.
You can already re-spec and hopefully they will allow stat re-speccing eventually as well. I find it very hard to imagine that your character was irreparably made unplayable.
It is just a guess (correct me if i'm wrong), but i would suppose that he found some build that he found fun to play and very powerful, too. Once it got nerfed and became just average as a whole, it, naturally, induced frustration. Which i can understand. Still, i will admit that even so, i can't see the point of questioning the whole balancing process because of this. Especially when you can respec your character.
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)). I knew a 20 y o corean who spoke fluently 7 languages (french included). But US guys can hardly see any value in learning anything other than english. Even Obsidian releases its video updates without much care for non native speakers (speaking fast, not articulating), like they are assuming ''well, we are the world, you know, if anything, you should understand this". This kind of thing kind of gets of my nerves since many years. And InXile is the same, by the way. The state of french translation for Wasteland 2 was... it was not even insulting anymore past this point.
Are the expansions going to increase the level cap?
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I understand they could not do this with Pillars, but once the trilogy for BG was entirely released, making your character progress throughout the saga was a great feeling. You could only get to lvl 8 with BG1. Bioware never needed to find some crappy reason for you to be lvl 1 in BG2. I'm afraid they will do the same if there is a Pillars 3. Increasing lvl cap in the 3 expansions is pretty much guaranting they'll do it. Don't want it.