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Yellow Rabbit
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Posts posted by Yellow Rabbit
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Speaking of promised and undelivered features, if there's someone here who worked in real game development, I'd like to ask a question. I can easily imagine the situation when designer writes out a concept for a game (or, say, kickstarter pitch), team starts working on that concept, and later in the production certain feature(s) doesn't feel right (doesn't fit with gameplay, artstyle, generally feels wrong, whatever), so it's better to cut it off rather then redesign the whole system to shove it in. Could that be real case in game development process or am I stupidly theorizing too much?
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...(maybe Obsidian did not know the guy was going to use his beta access to publish a game review)...
This, I think.
Developers took careful approach to media coverage this far trying to make rough state of BB builds not too obvious, which resulted in some serious hype around the game as if it's already totally playable. It seems this reviewer guy just took his/his friend-backer's/his fellow-journalist/some smug pirate's BB build and made "first impression" review... without paying any attention to actual state of affairs with the game and basic knowledge of a genre he's working with. It happens.
At least reading this review was amusing.
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Lack of tutorial is BB's main fault with bugs and voiceover shortage going after it? Oh... kay.
Seriously, though, this guy surely knows what he is reviewing nearly as good as I'm familiar with quantum physics.
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Yeah, Portugese language question was brought up on this board several times already. Official response was there's still possibility to add it, some people already volunteered to translate in-game texts, only obstacle is amount of testing required to do it before game's release. Nothing new since then.
Here, see for yourself.
I'm pretty sure, though, that if PoE will not be available on Portugese in a launch day, it'll be added soon afterwards without Obsidian's participation if need be.
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Don't you worry, Bruce, optimism is always rewarded. Even if devs will heartlessly strip protagonist of any chance for love in a whole series (please, devs, do so!
), there certainly will be possibility to mod romances in. Look at how thoroughly Sensuki and Bester vivisected BB already.As of OP, even without MasterPrudent's quote it's unlikely Obsidian was going to make micro-transaction oriented DLC like additional armor set or something. Not their style. I'd expect relatively short independent plotline with several new locations, characters and, maybe, monsters, stuff like that.
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My understanding is that the expansion is going to offer Romance...
I wasn't worried about quality of an expansion in a least until you said that. Now I am. Darn.
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Yeah, monk goes a bit stronger than others through all the BB builds. I don't see the problem here, though. One class is easier to play than the others, so what? It's not a multiplayer game with "every class must have equal strength". As long as other classes are still fun and have their uses in party, I'm okay with that.
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That's weird. Many people around here myself included seem to think exactly the opposite. If there is something PoE does better than IE games did it's graphic and art style (and, maybe, narrative and writing overall, but we haven't really seen much of that in BB). Spell vfx may be a little too colorful, but backgrounds' art style looks great imo. Well, art always is a matter of taste, isn't it?
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Call me a noob, but I've never understood what DRM is. Are you saying that some versions of PoE will need an internet connection to play or what? If I do need an internet connection to play PoE with DRM then I must have a non-DRM version.
In PoE's case, yeah, DRM means you'll need constant connection to Steam server. Game's gonna be tied to your account and you'll need to be logged in to play. Steam requires it for most games anyway, with all those offline mode glitches people complain about.
FYI, as far as DRM goes, it's a thing that makes sure you're rightful owner (buyer) of a given software before launching it. Nowadays DRMs in videogames mostly (d)evolved into requiring to be constantly online, which makes people with limited internet connection (yes, they do exist) sad and/or angry. That's why hoooray to GOG!
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Could be, I dont know, I just do know that when ever I see Unity game it is marked as bad looking game with crappy animations while other mentioned engines, especially Unreal manage to pull good looking games that arent even demanding on hardware.
Have a look on Dreamfall Chapters Book One for example. It's on Unity too, you know.
As Bryy already pointed out, animation and textures quality per se have little to do with engine, it's sheer development time and money (engine just puts upper plank on detalization in order to perform well enough). Developers that pick Unity as fairly convenient and cheap tool usually are indies, they don't have resources or desire to really emphasize graphic part. And that creates false assumption "every game on Unity looks bad -> Unity is a crappy engine".
I don't really get how all this is about PoE, though. Game looks darn good for what it tries to be.
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I tried scripting once in BG2. Hated it, never used it again.
Am I unusual? I thought most people just did the pause spam+micro thing in IE games.
Same goes for me. AI script controlled characters in BG series always did everything except things I wanted them to do.
I can understand, though, why people would want these scripts in PoE. With current combat speed in BB player ends up pausing/unpausing too frequently indeed.
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All this has done is create an intense urge to find and read everything this person has written.
That turned out okay for me. Reading last four pages of this thread was pretty amusing. Reminded me of an old puzzle for primary school students: "Two crocodiles fly in the sky, one is yellow, the other heads northward. Question: how old I am? Answer (coming from one of the students): 24. Because when I start to talk gibberish, dad blandly calls me 'half of an imbecile', and I'm 12 years old"
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...they've already failed on both the "memorable companions of Baldur's Gate" (only 8 companions, hardly enough to fill a single party, let alone do anything remotely resembling being close to Baldur's Gate)...
What does number of companions have to do with their memorability? Actually, it's quite the opposite, less on quantity should make it more on quality.
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Perhaps it's not fair to compare any dungeon level to Durlag's Tower or Watcher's Keep - those were the highlights of the entire BG series, but most encounters in BG weren't remotely as interesting as these. Lots of random packs of hobgoblins and wolves and xvarts. These dungeons also shipped in expansion packs and reflect a degree of mastery of the tools that Obsidian may not have time to acquire during PoE's development but may reach in future installments.
Just to highlight variety of opinions here, as much as I love BG1 (not so for BG2) Durlag's Tower from ToTSC expansion was, to put it mildly, thing that should never have happened to the game. Well, maybe with exception of Aec'letec encounter. It'd be nice if PoE wouldn't have dungeons designed like that one. Nice for me, that is.
Sorry. Just got turned a little on by that "highlights of the entire series la-la-la"
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Ask anyone who played the beta in the beginning, their original version of the xp system was pretty bad. They improved it since, but it's still not good.
Oh, so you're arguing not against quest-xp on principle but because of it looking bad in earliest BB builds? No wonder then. There was many things broken there. Whether it's an issue of concept or implementaion/balance is another question, I have no say on that. Concept looks okay, though, and works pretty well in other good games, so... *shrug*
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That's because Polish and Russian are handled by the local distributor, not Obsidian themselves.
Does Obsidian handle any localization at all? It's not their job, as far as I know.
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My first thought about "100%ing" was that it supposed to mean "seeing all content the game has to offer". And I concur with Luckmann on that, in proper RPG you can't do it in a single playthrough. There should be class-restricted, alignment-restricted and other whatever-restricted quests and ways to solve them excluding each other so that you have to choose one (and miss all the others). This is called "roleplaying options". Pretty good thing, actually.
That said, I've got what Sarex meant too, just wanted to point out that first thing coming to mind after seeing word "100%ing" was that from above.
Now, as far as exploring is concerned, I see I need break out the crayons. When you explore and go through an area, you are forced to murder hobos, as you oh so eloquently put it, you will get 0 xp (at least in the original iteration of the xp system), so you will get 0 character progression. Then you will take quests, and the empty spaces you made will only then start giving xp, so only then will character progression happen. What we call that is uneven and erratic character progression and as you may or may not know that is also called bad gameplay design.
You're exaggerating. Yeah, character progression pacing is an issue without kill xp in a combat oriented game. Thankfully, with right content spreading and right balance it can be made not so striking. If you go out exploring and face not only battles but also some quests tied to those battles, it's gonna be okay. BB doesn't do it good, and I suspect that main game won't either, but it's possible nevertheless.
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Agreed with the sentiment. Although I fail to see what real choice Obs had in this regard. Meddling with classic IE dialog presenting system would be PoE's instadeath in the eyes of pretty much all backers. Heavens know Obs've made enough changes in classic scheme as it is to make people worry.
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But why would you kill the baddies (pull the lever) if you don't get XP (sugar water)?
It's good we don't have perceivable kill xp points in real life, otherwise most of us would be killed by some minmaxers already. No, srsly, from rp standpoint fight is something you should engage in only having very sensible reason (or not having choice). Abstract kill xp gives you reason to murder everyone that benefits you as a player but doesn't make any sense for your character. That tempts to abandon roleplaying (not that many people mind this thing anyway).
As for me, I couldn't care less whether amount of xp I gathered is somewhere close to theoretical maximum I could've get as long as my character is strong enough to proceed through the game.
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Ok, I'll draw parallel with literature in this regard. Not really appropriate here, but should do to some extent.
Romances per se are good tool to invoke emotional response, there's lot of interesting things could be done with them, sure. But there's entire genre in fiction dedicated to love stories being center of the plot. Have you ever read those books? Most are just horrible. We call it "pink snot in chocolate" on my native language, not sure if there's equivalent in English, but I hope you've got the point. Certain type of people get addicted to it for some reason.
When it comes to RPGs, I always had feeling that narrative designers took romance concept right from those books right for the people addicted to them. "People find elves cute - let's give them option to romance (or even bang, ftgj!) some elves. And of course there should much talk about feelings and such." Yeah, and each and every weird but romanceable race psychologically is human, period.
To make long speech short, I find devs' reasoning behind adding romances in a game wrong for well written romances. Not to add realism, show character's personality, add engaging plotline and all that, but to fullfill players' wishes for exotic chits and guys in context of game world with tools taken right from cheap literature.
The best two compromises I saw for this in a game would be BG2 and P:T. In Planescape I didn't even realize there are something romantic until the end, and BG2 banters just pissed me off to no end. Realistically, though.
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Yeah, see, that's my main problem with romances as you see them, Bruce. It's an RPG. You're playing a role. If you're rolling a centaur, it's okay for your character to harass centauresses. Would be strange for him to romance human, for instance, unless he's a pervert.
Do you want romance to be able roleplay your character better or just because you like elves/orcs/whoever and want an option to... errr... make closer acquintance with them as yourself, disregard your character? The latter just wrong as for me.
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True. Fire godlike definitely would experience some trouble in his/her intimate life. Unless he/she has ways to turn off this flame for a while, turn vent or something. On the other hand, every party would be HAPPY to have fire godlike in its midst while in an area without any firewood to start a fire and cook some stew. Wouldn't you love fire godlikes in such circumstances?
Hmmmm... Maybe we should ask devs to make fire godlikes count as one set of camping supplies? With several days cooldown afterwards, of course. Balance is sacred.
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@ Yellow Rabbit
Oh, I know. I just assumed I would be fine, tho. I had plenty of warning, but I chose to ignore it. Then I whine about it. That's why unnecessary hand holding gets put into the game, because sometimes I'm in a mood where I don't want to put in the effort and cry about the results. The Dragon Age series is the way it is because of people like me. And I'm sorry for that. I was just commenting on why that might be an attitude game devs have now. Because I, and people like me, suck and are lazy.
Heh. For some reason I don't believe in particularly you whining about such things afterwards.
You're right about reasons of such dev's behavior, though. Casual players' whining is definitely one of them. It's just that Josh should know much better which game needs such talks and which one doesn't. PoE doesn't.
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@Lord Wafflebum
Regarding Basilisks encounter specifically, there are Protection from Petrification spell (both for mage to learn and for everyone as consumable scroll) and potion of mirrored eyes. Also, undead summons immune to petrification. My point is, game did give you a clue about what you can do against petrification, but didn't make this clue too obvious. That's what they call good design.
Of course, it's another story altogether when game assumes that you're metagaming and says like "die and reload until you fumble something suitable for encounter or go ask someone".
), there certainly will be possibility to mod romances in. Look at how thoroughly Sensuki and Bester vivisected BB already.
Adult Language Filter option
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Are you asking why info in newspaper articles is always doubtful at best? Because it's newspaper, obviously. Handpicked facts to create "right" (author's) impression on topic in a first glimpse. Now I'm not saying that this is all bull***t (though it may be), just that it cannnot be accounted as reliable source of information.
Seriously, read aeonism's and lord Wafflebum's posts once again, they laid it out nice and simple. Violence in games may or may not be one of the factors leading to violent behavior, but it certainly not the cause of said behavior. Concentrating on this you miss all the other factors, some of them far more meaningful.
On topic, fast and dirty search-and-replace-by-pattern script you're suggesting could cause some nasty problems depending on how dialogue mechanism works, seriously. It's a lot of work for programmer. So since implementing the toggle you're asking for not going to happen, wouldn't not playing the game while children around be simpler option? Or you're saying there's some children near you 24/7? Man, I certainly don't envy you if this is the case. Gotta be horrible.