Pathfinder Kingmaker is bigger then Deadfire

[jww]

I see they delayed the big patch. 1.06 still has the problems that are making it impossible for me to play. Have they said *anything* about fixing the UI performance or adding an option so that your characters aren't slogging through a pool of molasses? Or fixing the startup time? Adding a note saying the game will boot slowly the first time around is kind of pointless, when it boots slowly every single time. And why is their publicly released version of the game crashing every time I quit, with a message that I don't have developer debugging tools installed on my Mac?

 

Still can't find any documentation on how the Magus feats function, so I switched to Cleric, but still stopped 10 minutes into the game because my party walks slower than an 80-year old with a walker.

 

I really, really want to play a Pathfinder game, but they're going to need to make a lot of progress to convince me that this is it.

 

P.S. Why implement Eldritch Knight but not implement Still Spell???

Edited October 6, 2018 by jww

[Excalibur_2102]

I am kinda perplexed as to how this game is succeeding where pillars 2 did not so much (okay so we dont have official sales figures, but at least on steam pathfinder looks to be doing better than PoE 2 did).  I mean, they are both appealing to a similar audience.  Pillars 2 was critically acclaimed upon release, yet pathfinder had next to no reviews when released, so customers didnt have anything to go off of before purchasing the game.  Maybe opinions of people who played the beta?   The reviews i've seen for pathdfinder are not glowing either.  Initial user reviews also seemed worse for pathfinder, citing bugs and balancing issues.

 

However at this moment in time Pathfinder still hangs around the top 10 in steam when I'm sure PoE2 disappeared in less than a week.  the steam review count is already more for pathfinder.  The game has 17000 people playing right now (granted I cant recall the peak numbers for people playing PoE2).

 

So why is this?  Is it because its the first game under the pathfinder ruleset?  The gameplay in general?  Please don't misunderstand my post though, I don't want Pathfinder to fail, in fact I will be picking it up at some point most likely.  I just want to see Pillars succeed as well.

[majestic]

So you guys always complain about the NPCs in this game being useless but Harrim just broke my game. He's the ultimate tank now, I'm just not sure how it happened. Best guess I have is that he should have (permanently) died while under the effects of level drain but didn't - and now he has 112 (yeah, in words, one hundred twelve) damage reduction with no exceptions.

[HoonDing]

Who could've known five Russians in a sweatshop outside Nizhniy Novgorod make buggy games?

[Raithe]

And I'm pretty sure all of the Master Artisan quests are bugged. At least they all seem to reach a point where you're meant to interact with some npc, but whichever npc it is can not be interacted with to trigger whatever is needed for the quest.

 

This is a weird game. It's full of small bugs (and a few big ones), the loading screens seem to idle along slowly, and at times are constant where you go back and forth between them all. The writing is standard fantasy game fare... but I'm still having fun for the most part playing the damn thing.

[Slotharingia]

 

councillor the other 2 are the lamashtu priestess and the one old bat you can take as an envoy. Magister is the sadistic mage in the troll chapter. High priest, again the Lamashtu priestess. Regent, the teen you can take as an envoy.

 

As you can tell, I'm bad at names and too lazy to look them up lmao. Oh and the undead cyclops can be magister.

Hm, weird. The sadistic mage from the troll chapter (Bartolomew) can only be Treasurer or Grand Diplomat for me.

 

yeah I might have that wrong. He doesn't like my characters ;P

[Slotharingia]

I am kinda perplexed as to how this game is succeeding where pillars 2 did not so much (okay so we dont have official sales figures, but at least on steam pathfinder looks to be doing better than PoE 2 did).  I mean, they are both appealing to a similar audience.  Pillars 2 was critically acclaimed upon release, yet pathfinder had next to no reviews when released, so customers didnt have anything to go off of before purchasing the game.  Maybe opinions of people who played the beta?   The reviews i've seen for pathdfinder are not glowing either.  Initial user reviews also seemed worse for pathfinder, citing bugs and balancing issues.

 

However at this moment in time Pathfinder still hangs around the top 10 in steam when I'm sure PoE2 disappeared in less than a week.  the steam review count is already more for pathfinder.  The game has 17000 people playing right now (granted I cant recall the peak numbers for people playing PoE2).

 

So why is this?  Is it because its the first game under the pathfinder ruleset?  The gameplay in general?  Please don't misunderstand my post though, I don't want Pathfinder to fail, in fact I will be picking it up at some point most likely.  I just want to see Pillars succeed as well.

No idea! Maybe lots of Russians play it? I like the game and would probably love it were it not for quite a few things lol, BUT it has a ton of really serious issues, both intentional and unintentional and as far as playability goes POE2 was so much better, they aren't even in the same universe. Kingmaker feels like it was made by people who don't know what they are doing on a number of levels. I played Deadfire 2.5 times when it came out and I can't remember coming across any really serious bugs, besides one quest but it could be fixed with console commands, and another one they fixed in a patch. It also has a lot of loading (is that a Unity thing?, but nothing like as bad as Kingmaker. Maybe the really long intro and the imo very boring slide shows with the gods ruined it?

 

I see they delayed the big patch. 1.06 still has the problems that are making it impossible for me to play. Have they said *anything* about fixing the UI performance or adding an option so that your characters aren't slogging through a pool of molasses? Or fixing the startup time? Adding a note saying the game will boot slowly the first time around is kind of pointless, when it boots slowly every single time. And why is their publicly released version of the game crashing every time I quit, with a message that I don't have developer debugging tools installed on my Mac?

 

Still can't find any documentation on how the Magus feats function, so I switched to Cleric, but still stopped 10 minutes into the game because my party walks slower than an 80-year old with a walker.

 

I really, really want to play a Pathfinder game, but they're going to need to make a lot of progress to convince me that this is it.

 

P.S. Why implement Eldritch Knight but not implement Still Spell???

The incredibly slow walking is a feature. Who knows why anyone would think it's a good idea. As for class info, it's severely lacking in most departments. You can mix and match almost anything, which is gonna surely produce some terrible results, especially since the pros keep stating you have to min-max the characters to not totally suck. There's nothing useful written about the elite classes and the info on skills and weapons etc is also terrible. They have weapon proficiencies in weapons I've never even seen. It's like you have to know in the first few levels what wep you want to use and then doggedly stick to it. I picked bow on my second char, but probably should have gone for light crossbow as he only has 10 STR. I've only found enchanted composite crossbows, and they require higher strength to shine, or so I've been told.

[Volourn]

"I am kinda perplexed as to how this game is succeeding where pillars 2 did not so much (okay so we dont have official sales figures, but at least on steam pathfinder looks to be doing better than PoE 2 did).  I mean, they are both appealing to a similar audience.  Pillars 2 was critically acclaimed upon release, yet pathfinder had next to no reviews when released, so customers didnt have anything to go off of before purchasing the game.  Maybe opinions of people who played the beta?   The reviews i've seen for pathdfinder are not glowing either.  Initial user reviews also seemed worse for pathfinder, citing bugs and balancing issues.

 

However at this moment in time Pathfinder still hangs around the top 10 in steam when I'm sure PoE2 disappeared in less than a week.  the steam review count is already more for pathfinder.  The game has 17000 people playing right now (granted I cant recall the peak numbers for people playing PoE2).

 

So why is this?  Is it because its the first game under the pathfinder ruleset?  The gameplay in general?  Please don't misunderstand my post though, I don't want Pathfinder to fail, in fact I will be picking it up at some point most likely.  I just want to see Pillars succeed as well."

 

Russian hacking.

 

 

More seriously, the game is simply better and more importantly, they  are targeting  a specifici audience while PE tries to please 'everyone'[ and fails.  Both games want to piggyback on the popularity of BG yet   only PF actually gets what  BG is about. I say this and I like both PEs but it is clearly that PF was made by people who actually like the IE games.

 

 

P.S. In more important news, finally got the latest pathes to work by 'repairing' the install. LMAO Now hopefully the game works.  L0L

 

 

p.s.s. Clearly, though, PE series has way less bugs and  technical issues. <> Not surprising considering their a  mainstream  company with lots of employees.

[Slotharingia]

More seriously, the game is simply better and more importantly, they  are targeting  a specifici audience while PE tries to please 'everyone'[ and fails.  Both games want to piggyback on the popularity of BG yet   only PF actually gets what  BG is about. I say this and I like both PEs but it is clearly that PF was made by people who actually like the IE games.

 

 

P.S. In more important news, finally got the latest pathes to work by 'repairing' the install. LMAO Now hopefully the game works.  L0L

 

 

p.s.s. Clearly, though, PE series has way less bugs and  technical issues. <> Not surprising considering their a mainstream  company with lots of employees.

I'm not sure they are targeting a specific audience, or one that's radically different from PoE. You could equally say they are targeting P&P players, even more specifically of Pathfinder, but aside from their sticky note about how they've redefined normal to mean hard, they've also said the game is for everyone, and you can play it on story mode.

[ShadySands]

Back to waiting on patches as I'm starting to hit more bugs

[Purkake]

Man, must be pretty awkward when a noobie Russian studio can make a better CRPG on their first try than Obsidian after god knows how many years now.

 

Maybe they can license the engine?

[jww]

Man, must be pretty awkward when a noobie Russian studio can make a better CRPG on their first try than Obsidian after god knows how many years now.

 

Maybe they can license the engine?

 

Is that a joke? Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a good rule set, which did not come from the studio. It came from decades of development over the life of D&D, leading to d20, 3.5, and then Pathfinder.

 

Is there anything else good about it? Certainly not the engine. Maybe the game gets better -- I can't tell, because it's unplayable now.

Edited October 7, 2018 by jww

[Purkake]

 

Man, must be pretty awkward when a noobie Russian studio can make a better CRPG on their first try than Obsidian after god knows how many years now.

 

Maybe they can license the engine?

 

Is that a joke? Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a good rule set, which did not come from the studio. It came from decades of development over the life of D&D, leading to d20, 3.5, and then Pathfinder.

 

Is there anything else good about it? Certainly not the engine. Maybe the game gets better -- I can't tell, because it's unplayable now.

 

Nothing has stopped Obsidian from using Pathfinder, it's been out for a while now. While there's still bugs, Owlcat has pretty much figured out RTwP gameplay things that Obsidian never could, stuff like AI (especially companion AI), the overmap, resting, inventory management, an intuitive UI. You know stuff that actually makes people want to play the game.

Edited October 7, 2018 by Purkake

[jww]

 

 

Man, must be pretty awkward when a noobie Russian studio can make a better CRPG on their first try than Obsidian after god knows how many years now.

 

Maybe they can license the engine?

 

Is that a joke? Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a good rule set, which did not come from the studio. It came from decades of development over the life of D&D, leading to d20, 3.5, and then Pathfinder.

 

Is there anything else good about it? Certainly not the engine. Maybe the game gets better -- I can't tell, because it's unplayable now.

 

Nothing has stopped Obsidian from using Pathfinder, it's been out for a while now. While there's still bugs, Owlcat has pretty much figured out RTwP gameplay things that Obsidian never could, stuff like AI (especially companion AI), the overmap, resting, inventory management, an intuitive UI. You know stuff that actually makes people want to play the game.

 

 

How do I customize the Kingmaker companion AIs? Right now, they just do whatever they want, and I haven't found the location in the UI so that I can set them up how I want.

 

As for the UI, it's hard to judge whether something is intuitive when it's running about 5 seconds behind my mouse.

[Slotharingia]

The companion's ai is terrible. Besides Octavia, all they do is autoattack, and you can set one skill for the AI to use but unless it's legit spammable, it bugs out and they just stand there repeating it pointlessly. Besides that, the inventory is abominable and needs to be constantly resorted. It's also hard to tell whether a character is still casting, and enemy HP is only sometimes visible. Items in stash seem unsortable, the way skills are listed is cluttered and confusing, and skills repeat themselves. The only thing it does better than other games is the pop up with the loot or stash from an area. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the game, but PoE does it better in about everything unless you know the Pathfinder rules inside out. In PoE you can hover over an enemy and see what skills work on them, etc. Kingmaker tells you "(attribute)negates" for a skill, but you never know what enemy has what stats. OFC I might be doing everything wrong, but if I am, it still suggests it's not exactly intuitive. And that's not mentioning the 10 gazillion loading screens and always having to go back and forth unless you memorise everything. xD

[xzar_monty]

I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the game, but PoE does it better in about everything unless you know the Pathfinder rules inside out. In PoE you can hover over an enemy and see what skills work on them, etc. Kingmaker tells you "(attribute)negates" for a skill, but you never know what enemy has what stats.

 

This, again, is a matter of taste. I don't particularly like it when the game holds me by the hand and pats my back the way PoE does. I like a challenge, and I like to figure things out myself. So, I appreciate it when the game tells me when something clearly isn't working, but unless I have a reason to know about a critter's defenses, strengths and weaknesses, I don't want to know about them.

[Fenixp]

Unless I have a reason to know about a critter's defenses, strengths and weaknesses, I don't want to know about them.

Well that's why PoE also gives you an option to disable that information, which I feel is fair enough. If we're talking PnP, enemy weaknesses and strengths always had to be completely transparent as you were doing the maths yourself, and the 'figuring out' bit was dictated by being clever, not by purposefully obscuring rules. If me and my DM did a roll which a monster would fail and then the DM would proclaim "A-HA! But the monster has a hidden power!" I'd smack him and you would too.

 

When a game doesn't even give you an option to make those rules as transparent as possible and it pretends to be faithful to PnP experience in any way, I'm just going to consider it a UI flaw (especially when disabling those UI elements tends to be a rather simple programming, and putting a checkbox in options menu is also not exactly rocket science)

Edited October 7, 2018 by Fenixp

[Murp]

If you people are really saying this shlock is better than PoE2 you're in the wrooong forum.

 

Russian collusion is real.

[Vaeliorin]

the feyspeaker "fix" is borking Gromnir's current play.  we made harrim a feyspeaker.  'course now the main attribute for the class has been changed.  ten charisma is kinda why we switched harrim from cleric to druid.  ten charisma for a 1.0.6 feyspeaker is even worse than a ten charisma cleric as spell dc for feyspeaker is now charisma based and spell memorization requires 10+charisma level.  

 

 

am lamenting absence o' pillars-style respec. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

But Feyspeaker spells were always based on Charisma.  Otherwise my 18 Cha 10 Wis Feyspeaker wouldn't have been able to cast spells above level 0.  It was just level 0 spells that were calculating DC incorrectly, supposedly.  I don't really know about that, because I never cast any 0-level spells other than light, but max spell level and bonus spells were definitely always charima-based for Feyspeakers.

[Manveru123]

If you people are really saying this shlock is better than PoE2 you're in the wrooong forum.

 

Russian collusion is real.

OwlCat forums ban you when you register an account. I'm not even kidding :D

 

Both games have advantages. One big advantage of Pathfinder is that its using an established ruleset, not an original one, which means that I will not one day wake up to a patch that effs up balance because the developer did not drink enough coffee in the morning. And I can play anything I want, not worrying that my class will suddenly become useless because balunz.

[Mamoulian War]

 

Unless I have a reason to know about a critter's defenses, strengths and weaknesses, I don't want to know about them.

Well that's why PoE also gives you an option to disable that information, which I feel is fair enough. If we're talking PnP, enemy weaknesses and strengths always had to be completely transparent as you were doing the maths yourself, and the 'figuring out' bit was dictated by being clever, not by purposefully obscuring rules. If me and my DM did a roll which a monster would fail and then the DM would proclaim "A-HA! But the monster has a hidden power!" I'd smack him and you would too.

 

When a game doesn't even give you an option to make those rules as transparent as possible and it pretends to be faithful to PnP experience in any way, I'm just going to consider it a UI flaw (especially when disabling those UI elements tends to be a rather simple programming, and putting a checkbox in options menu is also not exactly rocket science)

 

 

Well, lot of monster characteristic is hidden for players in PnP as well, unless they learn them by try and error or they roll specific Knowledge skill.

 

I give you an example.

 

If party encounters a Goblin for the first time, the party knows only this:

 

This creature stands barely three feet tall, its scrawny, humanoid body dwarfed by its wide, ungainly head.

 

If one of the players try to identify the monster with Knowledge (local) skill and rolls 6+, the GM gives you one piece of information, your character "remember" about this creature. For example:

 

You see a goblin. You recall that creatures like these, can see easily in darkness.

 

If he rolls 11+, he gets more information, like:

 

You see a goblin. You recall that creatures like these, can see easily in darkness, goblins are excellent riders and hide in shadows without much trouble.

 

If he rolls 16+, he gets even more information:

 

You see a goblin. You recall that creatures like these, can see easily in darkness, goblins are excellent riders and hide in shadows without much trouble. Their fortitude and reflexes are similar to average humans, but their will is easily broken.

 

Rolling 21+ gives you even more info.

 

I do not see how a game can effectively use mechanic like this to give out more and more information about your foes, but I have never met a GM, who would be transparent about his monsters.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Indeed! And may I add that the fans of games like tabletop D&D and Pathfinder, over time, they learn about the monsters, and a pretty big number of these more experienced players gets well acquainted with the stats as well. I've been a DM for years, but a player even longer, and despite my D&D meta-knowledge, I've never really gotten tired of the game itself.

It's almost a selling point when these games become CRPGs. It sure is to me, at least.

[Slotharingia]

OwlCat forums ban you when you register an account. I'm not even kidding :D

 

Both games have advantages. One big advantage of Pathfinder is that its using an established ruleset, not an original one, which means that I will not one day wake up to a patch that effs up balance because the developer did not drink enough coffee in the morning. And I can play anything I want, not worrying that my class will suddenly become useless because balunz.

Yup. I backed the game and am banned w/o ever having posted there. Apparently it's because of bots. You have to msg someone on the forum or on Discord (I think), but most people will not find that out. I'm stubborn and refuse to do it, because I think it's a terrible way of dealing with things, so I'm stuck on the badly designed Steam forum. As for classes being useless, while you might not suddenly get a useless class in Kingmaker, I'm going to bet it's pretty easy to make a crap one from the outset if you don't know what you're doing xD

When a game doesn't even give you an option to make those rules as transparent as possible and it pretends to be faithful to PnP experience in any way, I'm just going to consider it a UI flaw (especially when disabling those UI elements tends to be a rather simple programming, and putting a checkbox in options menu is also not exactly rocket science)

I'd definitely say a game that lets you use storymode, auto kingdom and premade characters should let stuff like this be toggled on and off. Either a game is playable by people who are clueless or who don't want to memorize/look everything/study battle logs, or it's not.

[xzar_monty]

 

Unless I have a reason to know about a critter's defenses, strengths and weaknesses, I don't want to know about them.

Well that's why PoE also gives you an option to disable that information, which I feel is fair enough. If we're talking PnP, enemy weaknesses and strengths always had to be completely transparent as you were doing the maths yourself, and the 'figuring out' bit was dictated by being clever, not by purposefully obscuring rules. If me and my DM did a roll which a monster would fail and then the DM would proclaim "A-HA! But the monster has a hidden power!" I'd smack him and you would too.

 

What? Enemy strengths and weaknesses had to be completely transparent in PnP? Which universe is this?

 

They did not, and do not, have to be transparent in any way whatsoever. For the record, I still happen to play D&D (3.5, the best one in my view) approximately twice a month, and stuff like that is not transparent, nor would we players want it to be.

 

If we come across something previously unknown, we may make Knowledge checks, provided we have the skills (in our group, this would nearly always be either the priest or the wizard), and if we're successful, we may know something about the creature before anything happens. If things do happen and we end up fighting, we may make observations about what happens, what seems to work and what does not. But no, definitely no transparency. I'm really surprised about your comment, it just doesn't make sense to my way of playing.

 

(As experienced players, we do have the problem of meta-knowledge, i.e. we often know more than is realistic for our characters to know. There is no clear-cut way out of this, but we do the best we can.)

[Slotharingia]

(As experienced players, we do have the problem of meta-knowledge, i.e. we often know more than is realistic for our characters to know. There is no clear-cut way out of this, but we do the best we can.)

And yet that meta knowledge would mean the game is much easier for PnP Pathfinder players than those who are not, hence the option to toggle it is a no-brainer.