Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 5

[Bartimaeus]

On 11/29/2022 at 8:42 PM, Make a contract with KP said:

I think this is the thing that gets me, all things considered I should love the PoEs. I don't. I just don't. Frankly I'm frustrated because I should love it but it just doesn't feel right, despite meeting a checklist I'd have for an ideal game.

When I played Pillars of Eternity 1, the first 10 hours was pretty much, "Am I enjoying this? I should be enjoying this. There's no reason for me not to be enjoying this. They've fixed a number of the core gameplay issues that plagued the BG games, are making use of the couple of good Planescape gameplay ideas that the BG series lacked while presumably lifting some more from other modern CRPGs, and I still enjoy the Infinity Engine games not named Icewind Dale, so I should enjoy this. Maybe I just need to play more before I start enjoying this." The next 10 hours after that was, "Yeah, so...like, I'm pretty sure I'm still not enjoying this, and I'm starting to feel like I'm not ever going to enjoy this." The final hour that I played was more like "p̷͖̈l̴̨̐e̶̥̽ă̷̭s̴̞͐ë̸̬ ̸̗̆g̵̀͜o̸̼͗d̶̨̿ ̸̱̐m̸͍͆ă̶̟k̶̻̓e̵̤͊ ̷̘̏ī̴̮ť̸̳ ̶̡̋s̸̡̔t̷͔̀ȯ̴̜p̵̬̈́". God must've heard my plea, because I stopped playing and uninstalled the game. I came back to try again sometime later because I thought maybe I just needed some time, but I only made it a few hours, and that was the end of it. I have ideas on a few of the particulars of why I didn't enjoy Pillars of Eternity, but I really think it's the culmination of many different things, both little and large, that are difficult to succinctly explain which eventually ended in me wanting to move my keyboard out of the way so that I could gently faceplant into an eternal coma onto my desk so that I wouldn't have to keep playing this game. Thankfully, since then, I have grown wiser: I don't force myself to play a game for nearly so long that such feelings arise if it's clearly not working for me, .

Edited December 4, 2022 by Bartimaeus
i used culminate twice in the same sentence what the hell

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Did the Gray Garrison and started the Crusade.

Wendaug continues to be better than Lann. She may be a demon worshipping cannibal, but she's actually funny.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

When I played Pillars of Eternity 1, the first 10 hours was pretty much, "Am I enjoying this? I should be enjoying this. There's no reason for me not to be enjoying this. They've fixed a number of the core gameplay issues that plagued the BG games, are making use of the couple of good Planescape gameplay ideas that the BG series lacked while presumably lifting some more from other modern CRPGs, and I still enjoy the Infinity Engine games not named Icewind Dale, so I should enjoy this. Maybe I just need to play more before I start enjoying this." The next 10 hours after that was, "Yeah, so...like, I'm pretty sure I'm still not enjoying this, and I'm starting to feel like I'm not ever going to enjoy this." The final hour that I played was more like "p̷͖̈l̴̨̐e̶̥̽ă̷̭s̴̞͐ë̸̬ ̸̗̆g̵̀͜o̸̼͗d̶̨̿ ̸̱̐m̸͍͆ă̶̟k̶̻̓e̵̤͊ ̷̘̏ī̴̮ť̸̳ ̶̡̋s̸̡̔t̷͔̀ȯ̴̜p̵̬̈́". God must've heard my plea, because I stopped playing and uninstalled the game. I came back to try again sometime later because I thought maybe I just needed some time, but I only made it a few hours, and that was the end of it. I have ideas on a few of the particulars of why I didn't enjoy Pillars of Eternity, but I really think it's the culmination of many different things, both little and large, that are difficult to succinctly explain which eventually culminated in me wanting to move my keyboard out of the way so that I could gently faceplant into an eternal coma onto my desk so that I wouldn't have to keep playing this game. Thankfully, since then, I have grown wiser: I don't force myself to play a game for nearly so long that such feelings arise if it's clearly not working for me, .

While I'm more positive now on PoE than you, I can relate. Going in I was very excited, but after several hours I wasn't having nearly a much fun as expected. Several hours later and I was exhausted. Combat was a repetitive war of attrition with grazes, the writing was like eating mounds of dry bread, and he characters just didn't draw me in. I finished out of a desire to see the damn thing done, similar to what our friend @majestic does with certain tv shows, and did not look at it again until Deadfire was announced. I came back to it and found it better, but still nowhere near the expectations I had and not something I feel very much temptation to play.

Why don't I enjoy it? I mean it checks all the boxes and it is unquestionably more competently made than the IE games or the Owlcat Pathfinder games....so why doesn't it do it for me? I think the answer is a combination of several factors, both small and huge, but at the end of the day PoE feels like something that just doesn't come together to achieve greatness.

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Make a contract with KP said:

the writing was like eating mounds of dry bread

Could you elaborate on this, even a little bit? I'm very curious. Also, what kind of writing do you enjoy -- in books, films, etc? Perhaps you could even give some specific examples.

I thought PoE was mostly written very well.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

32 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Could you elaborate on this, even a little bit?

No.

[xzar_monty]

37 minutes ago, Make a contract with KP said:

No.

Ok. Then we are back at the usual: as anyone can have any opinion about anything, simply stating that opinion without explaining how they came to have it is just a waste of time.

Edited December 4, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Could you elaborate on this, even a little bit? I'm very curious. Also, what kind of writing do you enjoy -- in books, films, etc? Perhaps you could even give some specific examples.

I thought PoE was mostly written very well.

Yeah, I don't know exactly what KP meant when he said that, but it's pretty difficult for me not to agree completely with him. Don't remember being interested in or even slightly fond of even a single character or quest narrative throughout the entire duration that I played. I don't think it was an issue of "hey, these writers don't know how to write sentences or paragraphs competently, or how to string a back and forth dialogue together", but more that I was not at all invested in any of it and there was just nothing even really small that was interesting for my brain to grab hold of to motivate me to keep going forward. There's a lot of garbage quests in BG1 that have bad gameplay - one that jumps out in my mind right now is "go get the dead cat from the waterfall for the little girl". The gameplay around that is literally...you talk to the little girl once, she tells you to go find her cat, you walk up the hill, pick up the cat, bring it back down and give it to her. In terms of gameplay, that's really quite lousy. But...the oddball way she resolves the dialogue after you bring back the cat's body with her being completely unphased by her beloved cat being dead because she'll just get her dad to revive it is enough for my brain to go "huh, that was weird and interesting" and remember it from then on. Meanwhile, I'm trying to remember...just a single character or line of dialogue from what I played of Pillars of Eternity, and I got nothing, it was all so...incredibly unremarkable and functional in nature. Maybe I didn't get deep enough in to give it a chance to get its footing, but both the BG games and PST did so much more to pull me in within the first few hours than the twenty hours I put into PoE.

6 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok. Then we are back at the usual: as anyone can have any opinion about anything, simply stating that opinion without explaining how they came to have it is a waste of time for those reading it.

A waste of time for somebody who doesn't understand the opinion, perhaps - not so much the case for those who keenly feel it as well. As it happens, I don't think KP is trying to convince specifically you that your experience with the game was, in fact, bad when you obviously feel different about it. These are opinions all the way down regardless of how you spin them.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[xzar_monty]

4 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

A waste of time for somebody who doesn't understand the opinion, perhaps - not so much the case for those who keenly feel it as well. As it happens, I don't think KP is trying to convince specifically you that your experience with the game was, in fact, bad when you obviously feel different about it. These are opinions all the way down regardless of how you spin them.

It's not a question of understanding the opinion, but simply of knowing at least something of the context that gave rise to the opinion. As for them being opinions, of course they are, I don't think anyone was ever going to dispute that.

Anyway, your elaboration of why you felt the way you felt was much more relatable, so thanks for that. I disagree almost completely, but I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that for either of us. I thought PoE started extremely well, in fact the beginning of the game was the most captivating one I've even experienced (with the exception of Ultima IV, but that was so long ago and I was so much younger when that game came out). I thought the biawac at the start was lovely, as was the "waking up" sequence of becoming a watcher, and then entering that dismal-looking village with corpses hanging from a tree. It was very dark and well-written. Now, it didn't hold up all that well, but the beginning surely was good.

I played BG2 before I got into BG1, and I thought BG1 was rubbish almost all the way -- much too simplistic in terms of writing, but what tired me the most was walking around all those mostly empty outdoor maps. I suppose my experience might have been different if I had played the games in the right order, but really, BG1 was not that good after having already experienced its successor.

[Bartimaeus]

I'm actually not a huge proponent of BG1, something that I've mentioned a number of times on here. I think the game has serious structural issues and the game kind of "ends" with flooding the Iron Throne mines for me because I cannot be arsed to do the whole city of Baldur's Gate song and dance without wanting to immediately just go to the end of the game, and never mind playing sweeper with all the sparse outdoor areas. Still, unfortunately for me, so much better compared to what I've played of PoE, . Maybe chalk it up to being invested to some degree in the world, setting, and story, and having some amount of fondness for the characters.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

I dropped PoE as soon as I hit max level and I think that was some way before the end of the game, because I did the dlc too. Never tried it again or tried the sequel.

My opinion on what made PoE not fun enough for me to finish it:

1. The driving people behind it didn't like what they were working on, but got trapped in it because of the promises they made. Kind of hard to make a spiritual successor to a game you don't like.

2. Focus on gameplay tuning and balance, instead of making gameplay fun. As a consequence of that very low diversity of items and items that were boring. I won't even go in to the health mechanic thing, or the resting (even pathfinder failed with resting).

3. Trying to reinvent the wheel with the story. (Writing new and unique stories is hard)

What it did great was the visuals and sound. If only pathfinder could do it like that it would be such a better game.

[majestic]

Huh, I laughed at @Make a contract with KP's joke. David Lynch is famous for just saying no every time someone asks him to elaborate on the meaning of one of his films. Dune aside, but Dune was directed by Alan Smithee. It is also an answer of a sort, more than it would initially seem.

What made Pillars of Eternity so unremarkable, or perhaps boring, for me, is not any one thing, it is a combination of many little things. As far as the writing goes, that is a little more difficult to quantify as I have yet to figure out what I really consider 'interesting' or 'good' beyond a few examples I can point to (one of them would be Neon Genesis Evangelion, which manages to be geniuinely interesting sci-fi, a deconstructionist examination of an 80ies sci-fi staple and a deep examination of depression, need for validation, pressure and loneliness - the director of the series expressed his own personal experiences through the characters, and it shows). I can point to a larger number of things that generally qualify as being well written but do nothing for me: Icewind Dale, Pillars of Eternity, and The Great Gatsby, which already caused groaning in the book thread, but I have to bring it up again, because it has the exact same issue. Reading it was unengaging. It took me longer to go through it's 200-something pages than reading a doorstopper novel generally considered to not be worthwhile by literature experts.

Now, the Fitzgerald novel at least I can point to and say that neither the time period nor the social circles it is about are of any interest to me, so that could explain my experience, but ruminations on the existence of souls and the nature of gods, an ancient, lost civilisation and a conspiracy to hide it all? Count me in. There were a handful of interesting moments in Pillars of Eternity. The parts of the main story in Defiance Bay and particularily the visit to the Sanatorium stand out, and when Thaos showed up to conclude the second act, at this point I thought the game would finally rise to its promise, at least in terms of storytelling - and it went back to being what it was before almost immediately.

The combat gameplay is a factor as well, as was my experience with the first few patches. I may have mentioned it before, but my first - and only - character that I played Pillars of Eternity with was a Cipher with a blunderbuss. The first couple of patches made my game experience worse in the name of 'balance' - because rogues arguably sucked when the game launched, my Cipher's ability to bypass the unfun combat were tuned down, instead of rogues being made stronger. Why? The only reasonable answer I have is that the designers of the game actually believed their combat to be fun, and for it to be fun, it needed a serious trimming down in options to bypass it more quickly.

The idea is preposterous to me, because combat in Pillars is a slog. It feels unresponsive even though it gives much better feedback than other real time with pause isometric games, and the pacing feels off. The graze mechanic, put into the game to give the players a minor success instead of dice rolled miss streaks, like they were all too common in Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale at the lower levels, made the combat feel even worse than better, and again, that is by far and large, based on a feeling. The entire time I played Pillars, I thought the game would play better as a turn based game.

Now, if someone actually enjoys the combat of the game, and I am certain there are people who do, then it becomes a much better experience.

There are a handful of other game elements that came from the success of the Kickstarter campaign. The stronghold mechanics feel like they were tacked on later, and Twin Elms is a break in pace at a point where the game shold move towards its conclusion. Both came from stretch goals. A number of other Kickstarters with runaway success had the same issue.

Edited December 4, 2022 by majestic

[Sarex]

On 11/30/2022 at 3:58 AM, ShadySands said:

I always forget BG3 exists. Is it still in alpha beta yearly access? I gave it a shot a while back but it did less than nothing for me.

I haven't even played it, but I cannot separate it from the DOS games, which I absolutely didn't like. I will still try it when it comes out, but my expectations are non existent.

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok. Then we are back at the usual: as anyone can have any opinion about anything, simply stating that opinion without explaining how they came to have it is just a waste of time.

this were the problem faced by the obsidian developers. fanbase wanted bg3, but those fans couldn't express what were essential for a bg3 'cept that anything not like the earlier games were wrong. josh would ask here or elsewhere why some aspect or ie staple were necessary and the fan bases would predictably split w/o providing any meaningful guidance. the little things added up? non specific combat issues and narrative changes were a gestalt bridge to far? not "spiritual successor" enough, even though obsidian never promised such.

personal we had very specific problems with the poe narrative, but am not gonna suggest poe were lacking in the writing department compared to bg or any other ie game save perhaps ps:t, recognizing that both ps:t and poe kinda lost momentum at the end. fortress of regrets and breith eaman/sun in shadows were similarly tedious from a gameplay pov and the culmination o' the respective stories were almost anti-climactic and representative o' a common problem for near all bis/obsidian games with the conclusion being either rushed or just plain unsatisfactory. 'course we kinda beat the narrative issues o' poe and deadfire to death many times. 

one frequent overlooked negative o' poe writing we will address specific 'cause is so often ignored were the fact the poe companions were unnecessarily, but understandably, tasked with all kinda world building exposition. new setting for poe meant there were gonna be considerable info dumps o' world lore, and the joinable companions were an obvious vehicle for communicating such lore. were a mistake to use companions.

'cause o' the nature o' companion quests in a crpg being advanced primarily through dialogues, a player were functional compelled to endure every lore drop 'cause you never knew which new dialogue option were the one which would lead to furthering the companion quest. awkward. clumsy. yeah, the lore dumps were optional, but as a player you had no way o' knowing which dialogues were in fact optional, so the exhausting exercise o' world building exposition were carried out in large part by joinable companions which could make 'em feel dull. am gonna suggest it were a mistake to have companions do the world building exposition even if the companions were the obvious way to achieve world building and recognizing that the lore drops were in fact technical optional.

however, am thinking poe achieved a major advancement with their companions... which they inexplicable abandoned in deadfire. crpg companion quests/romances is often tangential and largely insular from the main quest. doing so makes sense from a gameplay pov 'cause the developers don't know who is gonna be any individual's essential party member. by giving the player agency, the solution is to be making individual companions less integral to the story even if they is essential for some particular plot point. more than a couple kotor/kotor2 companions, for example, were integral to plot but they did less to bolster themes o' the respective games... kreia being a noteworthy exception.  for poe, obsidian did different in spite o' fact what they did should be the obvious approach-- all poe companion quests/stories reinforced the core themes o' poe in spite o' fact they were largely tangential to to the main plot.  all poe companions, regardless o' being functional insular, tangential and optional insofar as the core narrative were concerned, explored questions o' faith. duh. obvious. why doesn't all story-driven crpgs do as did poe? 'course you would have individual companion stories bolster the main narrative from a thematic perspective even if they is non essential to the main plot, yes? nevertheless, so few games do so.

oh well, as the first title in a new ip, poe succeeded far more often than it failed... though it did fail at times. deadfire were an improvement on poe, save for writing aspects such as the narrative relegating the player to a kinda pointless observer insofar as the greater events involving the gods and eothas as well as once again including companions who contributed almost nothing useful to the core narrative. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps so is clear, purchasers and prospective purchasers do not owe developers a detailed accounting o' why they is ok with game A but not game B. we can't explain why we prefer vanilla to chocolate ice cream, but remains true that as 'tween the two, am gonna choose good vanilla as 'posed to good chocolate. is up to obsidian to make games people buy. no doubt obsidian developers, believing they has crafted an excellent title, wonder at why their sales don't match a few other developers.  would be helpful if the player feedback were a bit more constructive, but is obsidian's job to figure out the right formula success. 

even so, the poe feedback pre and post release were a nightmare from our pov and musta' been worse for obsidian. typical we saw a comical polarized torrent o' support or condemnation following each obsidian suggestion, and the feedback were ordinarily devoid o' reasons or rationale as 'posed to fan feels.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Gromnir

[Gorth]

I suspect Owlcat suffers a bit the same as Obsidian when it comes to backers. Having to add stuff they committed to adding rather for commercial reasons (pledges) rather than making sense to adding. Not sure what my issue with POE is, but something about it just feels "sterile". The lore and setting didn't appeal to me. The writing and companions feels like... an AI wrote them? Technically smooth but with no soul?

 

Anyway, now rummaging through Threshold. Killing lots of demons. Then killing more demons. Finally killing a lot of demons. Also, met my old flame Nocticula at the entrance. Sadly only offering a profane gift (which I accepted) and not a night out

 

[Sven_]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I played BG2 before I got into BG1, and I thought BG1 was rubbish almost all the way -- much too simplistic in terms of writing, but what tired me the most was walking around all those mostly empty outdoor maps. I suppose my experience might have been different if I had played the games in the right order, but really, BG1 was not that good after having already experienced its successor.

It's one of the reasons I have played BG1 multiple times, and BG2 once: The entire middle act of BG2 is a linear set of dungeon crawls, aka Icewind Dale:The Underdark anyway (a thing that the original Icewind Dale did better too even without any Underdark, if that makes sense).

Plus, BG1 is still a bit like Ultima of old. It's not near as interactive and indepth in terms of simulation (NPC schedules, everything being pickupable and interactive in some way.) The Infinity Engine couldN't do that. But BG1 still simulates the Sword Coast as a place somewhat proper. And like Ultima, traveling from one place to the next, well in Ultima 7 if you're (un)lucky, you may see a wolf or two. It's designed like a place, not as a playground for the player to amass xg and fatloot and never possibly get bored.

BG2 meanwhile would demonstrate were Bioware were heading later on: Not simulating worlds, rather D&D theme parks/movie set pieces for all their tightly scripted romances, drama and quests to unfold. No location ever is for you to discover, you hear about it from quest givers (and travel there via a click of the mouse).  Every location equally serves a purpose to that quest. Gone are the forests that would exist because they're... forests. Gone too are the huts in that forest that would equally exist, because they're huts in the forest. If there was a hut in BG2, you knew beforehand there was soemthing going to be inside. BG2 unfortunately has influenced much since. It wasn't until Kingdom Come Deliverance came along that an RPGish game reminded me of BG1 again (or in some respect, Ultima, for that matter.)

That magic stuff was still rare in BG1 too, similar that it could take you hours to even get gear that doesn't break due to the game's lore actually being incorporated into the gameplay, as opposed to a readme.text or cutscene, contributed equally to making it my favourite of the two to this day. Stuff is so plentiful in BG2, it feels cheap. It's the kind of thing that previously only ever existed in Diablo action RPGs, where the entire core loop is rewarding the player as much as can, so that ideally he doesn't even consider turning the damn computer off to take a break. Like a slot machine where you put the coin into, and eventually you know there's gonna be some reward. 

The entire thing reminds me of the Realms Of Arkania series, actually. The first two games had a travel system that was quite elaborate and micro-intensive. Characters needed clothes (shoes would go even go bust after a while), food, could get sick so you needed somebody who could cure and find herbs -- and the resting system of assigning jobs to party members was actually a big inspiration for the Expedition series (Vikings et all) and Kingmaker/WOTR alike. Owlcat have publicly stated as much.

But as back then there was (expectedly) a vocal portion of the playerbase who deamt it all "boring" and "time-consuming", they took it mostly out for the third game, "Shadows Over Riva". Nowadays the main designer admits it was a mistake. As what they were doing may not have been to everbody's taste -- no surprises, as even the slower paced RPGs at that time were mostly about nonstop questing and combat and no "downtimes" in between. But it was something special that nobody did. And it still influences, unless countless other games released at the same time.

Such as Owlcat. Their resting system alongside having a travel is one of the reasons why I picked up Kingmaker back then. 

 

Edited December 4, 2022 by Sven_

[Gromnir]

23 minutes ago, Sven_ said:

It's one of the reasons I have played BG1 multiple times, and BG2 once: The entire middle act of BG2 is a linear set of dungeon crawls, aka Icewind Dale:The Underdark anyway (a thing that the original Icewind Dale did better too even without any Underdark, if that makes sense).

Plus, BG1 is still a bit like Ultima of old. It's not near as interactive and indepth in terms of simulation (NPC schedules, everything being pickupable and interactive in some way.) The Infinity Engine couldN't do that. But BG1 still simulates the Sword Coast as a place somewhat proper. And like Ultima, traveling from one place to the next, well in Ultima 7 if you're (un)lucky, you may see a wolf or two. It's designed like a place, not as a playground for the player to amass xg and fatloot and never possibly get bored.

one o' the advantages o' having posted on these boards for so very long is a useful kinda perspective.

top three complaints o' bg1 via community feedback:

1/2) too hard/too ez

3) the tedious empty wilderness maps punctuated by a gnoll or bandit encounter were not fun.

inappropriate difficulty were always the most frequent complaint regarding the ie games, but the next most common complaint were regarding the horrible implementation o' "exploration" in bg. particular following totsc, the fan base were overwhelming demanding more durlag's tower kinda content and less o' the gameplay hour inflating rando wilderness maps and their micro-encounters.

...

top three complaints for bg2 via community feedback:

1/2) too hard/too ez

3) not enough exploration.

...

is a no win for developers.

also, unrelated to your post, but...

Balance in Single-Player CRPGs

and

Why POE II became unplayable for me

seriously, there is rare a new topic on these boards. the exploration stuff we has seen do the pendulum thing in so many games? the suggestion that balance is pointless or that poe "failed," 'cause the obsidian developers hated the ie games? 

looking on the bright side, the #4 overall fan complaint for bg1 were likely regarding the underdeveloped bg1 companions, so clear the biowarians were able to glean something useful from boardie feedback and make changes which improved a subsequent title. is not all just a groundhog day situation with the end result being inevitable. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hawke64]

PoE and PoEII were excellent CRPG with good balance of combat encounters, exploration, and dialogues, while all of them worked together and the player's agency was acknowledged. It was not necessary to minmax in order to complete the game and most things were logical. The opening areas allowed to create the character and to understand the atmosphere of the setting. Though, I do dislike the "Ultimate" update and bloating the critical path of PoEII - it was perfect and reasonable from the start that in order to acquire the best hull you purchase it, instead of hunting down the logs. The final area in PoEII was just long enough with very optional combat, as most of the players (I, at least) would replay it several times in order to see the outcomes of some specific decisions or DLCs. Can't quite remember the Sun in Shadows. I think it was of average combat density? But it was great that I did not have to listen to the last corpse-to-become, not just skipping the dialogue, but actively starting killing him. Laying a couple of traps at his spawning point and opening the combat with a fireball, like in BG, would be nice as well, but I don't think it was possible. I don't quite remember if it was possible to prevent bosses from monologuing in BG1/2, but I used to place traps where they would be.
Overall, PoEII was very comfortable to play - you started the combat with a set amount of abilities and full health, no pre-buffing, no post-battle healing, no inventory management. Also, all skill checks in dialogues were static - you can pass them (maybe with buffs and a few items) or you don't, no rerolling until 20. The areas were unique and memorable, with the sizes just enough to explore and not get bored (speeding up the animations was great as well).

[Sven_]

4 hours ago, Gromnir said:

 

top three complaints for bg2 via community feedback:

1/2) too hard/too ez

3) not enough exploration.

.

To be fair, BG2 looks like a case of overreaction straight accross the board. Rather than populating some of that wilderness more, they tossed it out entirelly. Speaking overcorrection, I'm sure that "not enough unique loot and magics" was a fairly vocal leveled criticism towards BG1 also, 1999 or not... 1999 was year 3 after Diablo had hit, after all.

The lesson though is: You cannot and will not please everyone. One thing I've always been hesistant about regarding Kickstarter and crowdfunding is thus, and it's true: Players often demand what they THINK they want rather than what they actually want for a host of reasons... One of which being, as a simple excerise: Think of some of your favourite games. I'm sure that a lot of those had features that you either didn't know existed before or didn't think you'd enjoy until you actually played the game...

Even the IE games themselves, they iterated a lot, with Torment being the most obvious standout example (a game largely based on character study as opposed to stats crunching and dungeon crawling? WTF.) But far from the only one. Both BGs are very different games, as we'd found out too. If you counted "Throne Of Bhaal" as a thirdish sort of entry into that, that's a hugely different experience from both of them too (never liked it, admittedly).

Crowdfunding is nice and has lead to a few neat games that otherwise would have never existed. But occasionally then the problem suddenly ain't the publisher with specific demands, it's the crowd.  Thus, even if say legacy heroes such as Jon van Caneghem and D.W. Bradley would join forces to collect money for their new dream project (one CAN dream, can one not?), I'd rather back them based on a hopefully promising general vision, as opposed to a new "Legend of Might & Wizardry" or something. If they'd promised to deliver a game just like in the old days, they're naturally going to be judged by that.

Tim Schafer had found this out the harder way also, less so Ron Gilbert when he had actually delivered a pixel style adventure game, verbs included, in Thimbleweed Park. With Schafer everybody was thinking DOTT, Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. What everybody got was something a tad differently.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Sven_

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Did some companion quests and picked up Regill. Looks like I'll be going against the swarm soon.

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Huh, I laughed at @Make a contract with KP's joke. David Lynch is famous for just saying no every time someone asks him to elaborate on the meaning of one of his films. Dune aside, but Dune was directed by Alan Smithee. It is also an answer of a sort, more than it would initially seem.

"The absence of an answer is an answer too" - Stranger in WotR

But really, that was set up too much for me to not make that joke.

9 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

A waste of time for somebody who doesn't understand the opinion, perhaps - not so much the case for those who keenly feel it as well. As it happens, I don't think KP is trying to convince specifically you that your experience with the game was, in fact, bad when you obviously feel different about it. These are opinions all the way down regardless of how you spin them.

Yeah, I wouldn't dream of stepping on anyone's enjoyment of something or interpretation of something (barring something really dumb, like EEAAO being anti-semitic). If you enjoyed something I didn't or have a different interpretation that's great. I'm glad you had a good time or interesting thoughts.

9 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok. Then we are back at the usual: as anyone can have any opinion about anything, simply stating that opinion without explaining how they came to have it is just a waste of time.

I am a quarter of my life removed from my first PoE playthrough and am not blessed with a photographic memory. I only have the facts of how I felt, not the feelings that lead me to such a conclusion.

If you want to know what eating mounds of dry bread is like, eat a crusty loaf of bread without anything else. No matter how good the bread is, your mouth is going to dry out and you may feel it stick in your throat, which is an unpleasant experience. You NEED some water at that point. The writing in PoE was often very dense and narrow tonally, my initial take was that some interactions felt like you were being monologed at by Jeffrey Lebowski or an Aaron Sorkin protagonist without producing anything interesting or memorable.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Make a contract with KP

[Sarex]

10 hours ago, Gromnir said:

josh would ask here or elsewhere why some aspect or ie staple were necessary and the fan bases would predictably split w/o providing any meaningful guidance.

Yeah no, here he would just chime in on the discussion very rarely with one post and leave it at that. What was clear from his talks here and elsewhere was that he did not like BG2. As for people here providing guidance, I don't know how many more people needed to write that metagaming is something that is impossible to avoid without making the game pure RNG and that avoiding said metagaming should not be the focus of their development, that having weak character builds is not the end of the world as long as you are able to finish the game with said build, that having trash mobs that give absolutely nothing to the player will make them too annoying and that having no trash mobs will make the world feel empty and that having enemies that hand you your ass on a plate in the opening of the battle is not bad as long as it's rare and not in main quest path and yeah, the health system is convoluted just for the sake of it being convoluted.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

I don't know how many more people needed to write that metagaming is something that is impossible to avoid

How is it impossible to avoid? I agree with plenty of what you write above, but in my view, this just makes no sense. To avoid metagaming, you just play the game and see how it turns out. You may miss some stuff, but that's fine. Where's the impossibility of avoiding metagaming? Do we perhaps have a different definition for the term?

[Sarex]

33 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

How is it impossible to avoid? I agree with plenty of what you write above, but in my view, this just makes no sense. To avoid metagaming, you just play the game and see how it turns out. You may miss some stuff, but that's fine. Where's the impossibility of avoiding metagaming? Do we perhaps have a different definition for the term?

It's not (just) that, it's reloading a game to do something differently or in a better way, Josh is a big opponent of save scumming, basically he wanted the people to play the game like he imagined it should be played (obviously this was never stated is such terms by Josh and is my opinion on the matter). One of the biggest issues he had with BG2 was that for first time players (ie. people without previous knowledge of the game (ie. metagaming)) some encounters were unwinnable without multiple reloads, so his solution was to strive to make any encounter winnable on the first try. Now when you think about this in theory it sounds well and good, but in practice it makes for boring encounters and this was something that a lot of people voiced as happening.

Also god forbid someone figured out something broken and unbalanced. Purge it with fire.

From what I gathered Josh is not a big believer in letting the player play the game how he enjoys playing it.

[xzar_monty]

Ok, I understand, thanks. It is true that save-scumming is impossible to avoid.

I agree that some pretty bad choices were made in the spirit of balancing stuff. For example, one of the most serious consequences of this balancing ideology for me was that there was basically no loot in the whole game that made you happy. This is what you get when you balance stuff out: everything becomes the same. I understand the thinking behind it, and I agree that there are problems with some must-have items in various games, but Obsidian went too far in the other direction.

And yes, there were no memorable encounters, either.

Edited December 5, 2022 by xzar_monty

[uuuhhii]

kingmaker have a random chance to hard lock on auto kingdom management

wotr have similar problem with auto management

almost like owlcat isn't very good at designing this

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

Yeah no, here he would just chime in on the discussion very rarely with one post and leave it at that. What was clear from his talks here and elsewhere was that he did not like BG2

you are confusing poe2 with poe1, so, "yeah, no." am not sure how many times josh would respond ad nauseum to sensuki or others, in a single thread, trying to explain why water is wet or asking for more than feels arguments.

am not sure the point regarding metagaming. obsidan were not trying to avoid making best classes or best abilities. how many times this point needed be made is baffling. what they did were make sure all the classes were viable and useful. the nonsense 'bout metagaming is just strawman silliness as that were never a thing... evar. heck, obvious poe and poe2 were designed with reload in mind. a few encounters were first time difficult even for Gromnir who had played the beta improbable hours. for poe, the radiant spore, raedric 1/2, anything with an ogre druid, the dragons (mowrghek ien were taking us more than one try or three,)  concelhaut, etc... all those were quite obvious designed with reload in mind.

as far as trash mobs, poe has far fewer than any ie game and as there is no xp reward for confronting them anyways there shoulda' been motivation to avoid when possible, but too many gamers, trained by innumerable previous crpgs, killed everything, 'cause.  'cause they would get more money even if they didn't get xp? 'cause you never know when a rando mob might have something kewl? dunno. on the wilderness maps, most o' what you could possible describe as trash mobs may be ignored. yeah, the endless paths were a mess and obsidian admitted such were a mistake 'cause they never planned on so many levels, so they kinda threw more than a few sections together w/o much design other than an attempt to minimal fulfill a stretch goal. 

edit: am gonna admit galvino's workshop felt like an unnecessary inflated and punishing slog. endless paths were bad and 'ccording to developers (who apologized) were the result o' rushed implementation, but the galvino's location offered almost no solutions save for punishing and repetitive combat and it were done intentional.  that said, if you embrace the "spiritual successor" stoopid, then galvino's were a serious nostalgia moment for those who recall dragon's eye from iwd or any o' a dozen other simillar locations from the ie games.

as for your feels about the difficulty o' a few trash mobs... *snort* 

so, what ie game got it right insofar as trash mobs? please tell. how is the feedback with owlcat going insofar as trash mobs, eh?

3 hours ago, Sarex said:

the health system is convoluted just for the sake of it being convoluted.

see, statements like this show you is trolling. clear the effort weren't to be convoluted. maybe you think health/stamina were too convoluted, but obvious such weren't the goal and am gonna note the system were changed for poe2. heck, health/stamina were changed w/i poe as a  response  to the beta concerns.

the folks who didn't get the bg2.5 or bg3 they wanted complained endless that obsidian were unresponsive when fact were obsidian were highly reactive and involved, but the developers didn't always agree with the leave it as it is pov and the feels arguments were providing zero help.

you are remembering the way you want to, ignoring reality. not a new problem.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 5, 2022 by Gromnir

[Gorth]

Dammit Ember, what kind of head games did you play with my future girlfriend?!?

Finished the game. Some of the "set pieces" were truly horrible. Especially one where two of those Tsunami loving demons were hiding around the corner, so getting washed away, landing flat on your back was almost (not completely) unavoidable. Nothing 15 reloads couldn't fix.. In my next game, I think I would like to play a spell caster. Always fancied a necromancer. Not sure if that goes well with Lich or if I should try something all nice and good and angelic instead. Maybe turn all demon so I can hook up with some nice demon girls... That's a decision for next week (because work is a pain in the rear and working late hours this week)