Why 9 Charakters only?

[Kjaamor]

As much as i love BG2 and its huge cast of character (who were all interesting IMO), it was actually one of the things Josh Sawyer hated about the game.

 

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/449392305086952316

 

 

* CNPCs - Many of their introductions didn't sit well with me and I felt that there were too many who didn't have an equal amount of development given to them. While it was great that so many of them had a ton of quest content, I would have preferred a smaller list of companions with more attention to each one. This is what we said we were going to do at the start of the Kickstarter and it's what we're still planning to do.

 

As much as it disappoints me a wee little bit, this is what they are doing.  I don't really mind in the end.

 

Relevant and illuminating, though obviously disappointing.

 

On the discussion with Sacred_Path, I think we're wholly down to different interpretations now and probably feel that the other's points support our own arguments. I'm not swayed from my original standpoint (although with the above quote I feel that Obsidian's position is unlikely to change), but I don't imagine any further nitpicking from myself is going to be of much interest to anyone, so I'll leave it there.

 

I do fear the PS:T line the designers feel compelled to take, however, since I personally didn't enjoy the company of any of the PS:T characters I encountered, which directly contributed to me stopping playing.

 

Yeah I call bull**** on that whole quality>quantity thing. It simply doesn't hold water. It's in the numbers, the more characters you have, the bigger the chance that the player is going to find the one he loves to play with. Those 9 characters can be so in depth that you could write a book about them, if the player doesn't like them all that work is for nothing, on the other hand if you have 15-20 characters the chances of the player finding characters he loves increase dramatically.

 

...that.

[Sarex]

I'm curious ... when people say "characters that they love," do they mean more the actual personality/story of a potential party-member, or their combat abilities/stats in relation to how useful/complimentary they are to one's own character.

 

For myself, typically it's the former. I'll drag party members along an entire game, even if they're largely useless in combat, simply because I like having them around. Course, if no chr. appeals to me in that manner, then I'll just go by combat considerations alone and for that they may as well have zero personality.

 

My experience has so far been that games that try to have too many characters end up with 2-3 deep chrs. and a whole lot of shallow chrs (eg, that turn into nothing but combat-consideration fodder). I'd rather have 5-9 chrs. with a good chance of having 1 or 2 that I really like, then having to find/check out/try 20+ chrs. only to discover I don't really care about any of them.

 

I do the same, but as I said I very rarely find a character which I like, so I usually go with the stats.

[JFSOCC]

I got to say, with 11 classes and 9 companions, I'm curious which 2 classes (or more if some companions share classes) will miss out.

[Forlorn Hope]

Me too.

[Lephys]

Yeah I call bull**** on that whole quality>quantity thing. It simply doesn't hold water. It's in the numbers, the more characters you have, the bigger the chance that the player is going to find the one he loves to play with. Those 9 characters can be so in depth that you could write a book about them, if the player doesn't like them all that work is for nothing, on the other hand if you have 15-20 characters the chances of the player finding characters he loves increase dramatically.

 

All that said I don't mind there being 9 characters, because I very rarely pick my characters for their personality.

I'll see your call of bull****, good sir, and raise you one call of bull****.

 

Hall of Adventurers allows you to play with quite literally ANY companion you wish, so if you care more about what kind of companion you have at the direct cost of the quality of their individual development, this option offers you the best array of solutions.

 

Then, when you HAPPEN to want to play with one of the main companions (and/or you happen to start actually valuing the quality of the development of your companions), the smaller list of Oodles-of-TLC companions delivers by the boatload.

 

even if there are 108 companions in the game, in the end you will choose those who work best with your main, and often they are always the same

Teknoman2... is that a nod to Suikoden I see, or just coincidence?

Edited June 30, 2013 by Lephys

[Ffordesoon]

Yeah I call bull**** on that whole quality>quantity thing. It simply doesn't hold water. It's in the numbers, the more characters you have, the bigger the chance that the player is going to find the one he loves to play with. Those 9 characters can be so in depth that you could write a book about them, if the player doesn't like them all that work is for nothing, on the other hand if you have 15-20 characters the chances of the player finding characters he loves increase dramatically.

That may be true, but it's also irrelevant to the argument. The point is not that it is objectively better to go for quality over quantity, but that it is more efficient for Obsidian to do so given their relatively small budget. I'm sure everyone involved in this project would love to have a hundred companion NPCs with the depth of the nine we're getting - I certainly would. But that is impossible, whether or not we like it, because Obsidian does not have infinite money and infinite time. Nine fleshed-out companions (give or take a couple) are all the developers have time and money for. That is a fact.

 

The creation of each of those companions takes a substantial amount of time and money, because the small group of people making PE are human beings, and thus have to eat and sleep and perform other tasks necessary to ensure that they and those around them do not, you know, keel over dead. Ensuring their continued survival takes money and time. The whole point of raising the money on Kickstarter was to give the people working on the game the financial security to work on a project that is not safe and AAA-friendly. And those people have looked at the amount of money we gave them and said that for that amount of money, they can produce nine PST-level (not necessarily PST-style, but with an amount of mechanical and narrative depth greater than or equal to PST's companions) companions.

 

Which means - assuming that estimate is absolutely dead-on and nothing bad happens during development and all the other qualifiers in the world - that if they created eighteen companions instead of nine, those companions would be half as deep as the nine we're getting. If they created thirty-six, they would be a quarter as deep. If seventy-two, an eighth.

 

You presumably see the problem. Those of us who like deep, reactive, well-developed, PST-level companions - which is, I'd wager, quite a lot of us, and certainly more than a few of us - are essentially screwed if the number of companions goes up much higher than it already is. Assuming the PE team's estimate is correct, anyway.

 

Now, there are some players who don't like companions in the first place. They believe that the Icewind Dale model in which the player creates the party is a superior one. There are other players who simply will not like a single one of the prewritten companions, even though they do like companions.

 

Obsidian cannot entirely satisfy the second group, because that would require more money and time than they have, but they can at least placate that group while satisfying the first by making all companions skippable and allowing the player to roll up his or her own party at the Adventurer's Hall instead. Which also has the nifty side effect of not forcing you to take companions you don't like with you on adventures, thus satisfying those who choose to take companions with them based on personality rather than stats. From an efficiency standpoint, the Adventurer's Hall is a genius idea; it satisfies the needs of multiple types of players while not costing a whole lot to implement. It isn't a perfect solution to every player's problem, but nothing is.

 

But there is no way you will get more prewritten companions with all the depth of the promised nine (heh, "The Promised Nine" sounds like the name of a fantasy novel) unless the Eternity team cuts a feature. Which they may, as game development is not an exact science, but they seem to be sticking to the plan so far.

 

The above may or may not look like six posts awkwardly mashed into one, but I am very very tired now and as such refuse to edit it. So be glad you got a succinct response to your post along with a load of rambling nonsense. I could have just written the nonsense, you know.

[Sedrefilos]

This is the number o fcharacters they could create according to the money they raised (as they said). I don;t like it either, 'cause they are too little and there is not much of an option of who to take with you and who to leave (the monk is already out for me ). But. since it is about the budget, we can't complaint about that.

[Kjaamor]

That may be true, but it's also irrelevant to the argument. The point is not that it is objectively better to go for quality over quantity, but that it is more efficient for Obsidian to do so given their relatively small budget. I'm sure everyone involved in this project would love to have a hundred companion NPCs with the depth of the nine we're getting - I certainly would.

 

That's a very nicely written post you have there, but I'm fairly certain you missed the main point of their argument - or certainly my interpretation of it.

 

The argument was that it is better to have more companions with less depth.

 

It is evident that it would take more resources to make a hundred characters with the depth of the eight offered. The discussion is to whether or not this was the best use of the resources available.

 

PS:T gets brought up a lot in this thread, but a) BG II was the more successful game, and b) There is a new Torment game coming out anyway. I think because a lot of people love Torment, it's easy for them to forget that many of us simply like it. For myself and others who disliked the npcs within PS:T, there was nowhere to run from them and it was a significant blow to our enjoyment and was a contributing factor on me personally stopping playing. In comparison, while the characters of, for example, BG II and KotOR inspire love/hate reactions there is enough of them that everyone can be happy. I might take Aerie, another person might take HK, but both of us will get an enjoyable experience.

[teknoman2]

^

 better to have more companions with less depth?

the answer is no.

[Lephys]

^

 better to have more companions with less depth?

the answer is no.

You already HAVE more companions with less depth.

 

As Ffordesoon said, what if they make 20 companions instead of 9, and you hate all of them? Does that inherently mean they SHOULD'VE made more than that, even? At what point are you simply rolling with Adventurer's-Hall-rolled characters with like 3 added quests and 3 lines of dialogue, a piece? That level of depth would be wasted effort.

 

If you care more about some other specifics of the character than you do about the quality of that character, then you inherently have character depth at the bottom of your list of companion priorities, in which case the Hall of Adventurers offers you the maximum amount of character variance to satisfy your "No, that's not the character I want traveling with me" urges. If you value depth more than other little character details, then you're covered with the adequately-deep 9 characters, upon which much time and effort was spent.

 

It's pretty nonsensical to insist they spread the character quality out over a plethora of characters just to appease people's flippancy about character quality. You either want a character do be deeply intertwined with the entirety of the narrative, or you don't. It's pretty simple.

 

What's being argued is almost like saying "Take out all the differences in weapon/armor mechanics, but then put in like 50 more different weapon and armor models! 8D! That way, all the 'different' pieces of equipment will pretty much just be all the same, but I don't really care about any of that anyway, so long as I get the cool-looking ones I want."

 

Their decision to include deeply developed companions in the game is no different than their decision of what type of game to make in the first place. If they were going to make a racing game, and you don't like racing, you don't start complaining and insisting that they change the type of game to a puzzle game. Quality companions with depth is part of their design standard for THEIR game idea. They're even including the alternative roll-your-own so as not to FORCE you to use their characters, and yet still people feel the need to moan about it.

 

"You should sacrifice, in the design of your game, anything I happen to not care about, u_u!" Wow. Entitlement much?

 

What's funny is, I have yet to see any argument from the companion-depth-advocates insisting that they should do away with the Hall of Adventurers and SHRINK the companion list in order to maximize character depth at the cost of all the options they couldn't care less about.

 

[sarcasm]

I hereby propose ONE companion! It'll be the best companion ever! Don't like that companion? Too bad. I will, u_u... Oh, and no Hall of Adventurers. Also, the only class in the game should be Wizard, because I like Wizards. Oh, and Obsidian should mail everyone the t-shirt design I choose, for their physical rewards tiers. Also, optimize the game specifically to my PC's hardware, please, so that it works AWESOMELY on my computer but isn't even compatible with any other GPU/chipset. Thanks! 8D

[/sarcasm]

Edited July 1, 2013 by Lephys

[Iron_JG]

Yeah I call bull**** on that whole quality>quantity thing. It simply doesn't hold water. It's in the numbers, the more characters you have, the bigger the chance that the player is going to find the one he loves to play with. Those 9 characters can be so in depth that you could write a book about them, if the player doesn't like them all that work is for nothing, on the other hand if you have 15-20 characters the chances of the player finding characters he loves increase dramatically.

 

All that said I don't mind there being 9 characters, because I very rarely pick my characters for their personality.

 

This is like saying a newspaper can be good if it nails the headlines and writes only one sentence per article. A certain degree of development is needed to make the audience engage. Who people "like" is a very subjective thing, and not always fulfilling anyway. A worthier goal is to make characters worth engaging with, characters that contain layers worth peeling back and understanding. There are many party members in various games with personalities and motives I dislike. But working through that conflict is interesting and entertaining.

 

If Obsidian makes a slew of superficial characters rather than a few deep ones, I'm sure that, yes, they'd have a higher success rate with favorable first impressions. But focusing on a few characters instead makes it likely something interesting will happen after their one-liners. Would I like to see more than nine? Of course. But a story-heavy RPG needs quality characters to succeed, and I have to trust they've settled on the right number for that success.

[Eiphel]

Personally even characters I don't 'like' in the typical sense, I still fully appreciate if they are well developed. I'd actually consider if a disappointment if none of the companions didn't evoke some reactions other than liking from me. I feel like a really good array of companions will include enough diversity that you should always like a good number, but meet one or two who don't quite click for you - as long as they're not clicking due to who they are, as opposed to how they've been developed.

[Lurky]

PS:T gets brought up a lot in this thread, but a) BG II was the more successful game, and b) There is a new Torment game coming out anyway. I think because a lot of people love Torment, it's easy for them to forget that many of us simply like it. For myself and others who disliked the npcs within PS:T, there was nowhere to run from them and it was a significant blow to our enjoyment and was a contributing factor on me personally stopping playing. In comparison, while the characters of, for example, BG II and KotOR inspire love/hate reactions there is enough of them that everyone can be happy. I might take Aerie, another person might take HK, but both of us will get an enjoyable experience.

 

It is true that there is a new Torment game coming out, a game specifically inspired by PS:T. But you seem to be missing something: that game simply wasn't in the horizon when the Project Eternity Kickstarter was launched. In fact, the idea of having a direct spiritual successor to PS:T wasn't a possibility back then. Thus, PE was considered to be the next best thing possible, since it promised the best mix of the three IE games (BG, PS:T and IWD, not just BG), and that included story and companions made in the vein of PS:T, which emphasize depth over breadth. That mix of characteristics that Obisidian promised is what made people interested in the project, and thus it has to be respected. Because that promise was what attracted the funding necessary to be able to make the game.

 

Of course, after the popularity of PS:T was proven and inXile had managed to pull together as many factors as possible to make sure they'd be able to deliver, the Torment Kickstarter was launched and successfully funded. But that doesn't change the fact that "story and companions made in the vein of PS:T" is part of the promises made for Project Eternity, and is a reason why many people pledged money to this project last year. Since Obsidian can't go back on their promises, it means that now there will be two games inspired by PS:T in a greater or lesser degree. Bad news for those who aren't fond of the style of PS:T, but unfortunately, that's how both Kickstarters turned out to be.

 

If it's any consolation, another thing that was promised in the PE Kickstarter (a promise that Obsidian will necessarily have to keep, because it gave them extra money) was an expansion for the game. Expansions tend to have extra companions, so at least you could have that. Even better would be if Obsidian could "patch" any new companions they made into the main game, with enough reactivity added to them so that they can be comparable with the original ones, but I don't know if they would be able to do that (because it would involve revising the entire campaign again). In any case, if you didn't like any of the companions of the main game, perhaps the characters of the expansion could be more to your liking, since Obsidian would be able to incorporate player feedback of the original companions when making them.

[Karkarov]

9 will be okay.  I would have liked more myself but like losts of other posters are saying it comes down to a cost and quality issue.  Sawyer actually had a post somewhere on the forums specifically about how they did not like the way BG's had companions when they looked back at it because there were a ton of them.... but many were one dimensional and not that interesting.  They wanted all the PE characters to be capable of standing as great characters on their own and none of them to feel tacked on or boring.

[Kjaamor]

[snipped for brevity]

 

Good points. The only thing I could offer to this is that the Torment kickstarter became successful long before completion of the vertical slice of P:E, and perhaps that could've left greater scope to adjust issues like party npcs in light of this. Of course there is an argument to say that changing the original vision to accomodate other games only leads to bad design.

[Killyox]

From BG2 I only remember Minsk Dynaheir, Sarevok and that elf girl mage/cleric. Minsk wascool, dynaheir damn annoying, sarevok was ok and that elfie was meeeehh.

 

From BG1....some of those form BG2 obviously and that's it.

 

From PS:T, every single one. Morte, Anna, Ignus, Dak'kon, Nordom,Vhailor, Fall-From-Grace. Each and single one of them had really deep personality and was memorable in their own way.

 

I will take any day of the week 9 really deep and varied CNPCs than bland and uninteresting ones.

[Sarex]

I'll see your call of bull****, good sir, and raise you one call of bull****.

Hall of Adventurers allows you to play with quite literally ANY companion you wish, so if you care more about what kind of companion you have at the direct cost of the quality of their individual development, this option offers you the best array of solutions.

 

Then, when you HAPPEN to want to play with one of the main companions (and/or you happen to start actually valuing the quality of the development of your companions), the smaller list of Oodles-of-TLC companions delivers by the boatload.

 

Swing and a miss, Hall of Adventures let's you make generic companions with no banter talk, no side quest, in other words 0 depth. I was not talking about 0 depth.

 

 

That may be true, but it's also irrelevant to the argument. The point is not that it is objectively better to go for quality over quantity, but that it is more efficient for Obsidian to do so given their relatively small budget. I'm sure everyone involved in this project would love to have a hundred companion NPCs with the depth of the nine we're getting - I certainly would. But that is impossible, whether or not we like it, because Obsidian does not have infinite money and infinite time. Nine fleshed-out companions (give or take a couple) are all the developers have time and money for. That is a fact.

 

The creation of each of those companions takes a substantial amount of time and money, because the small group of people making PE are human beings, and thus have to eat and sleep and perform other tasks necessary to ensure that they and those around them do not, you know, keel over dead. Ensuring their continued survival takes money and time. The whole point of raising the money on Kickstarter was to give the people working on the game the financial security to work on a project that is not safe and AAA-friendly. And those people have looked at the amount of money we gave them and said that for that amount of money, they can produce nine PST-level (not necessarily PST-style, but with an amount of mechanical and narrative depth greater than or equal to PST's companions) companions.

 

Which means - assuming that estimate is absolutely dead-on and nothing bad happens during development and all the other qualifiers in the world - that if they created eighteen companions instead of nine, those companions would be half as deep as the nine we're getting. If they created thirty-six, they would be a quarter as deep. If seventy-two, an eighth.

 

You presumably see the problem. Those of us who like deep, reactive, well-developed, PST-level companions - which is, I'd wager, quite a lot of us, and certainly more than a few of us - are essentially screwed if the number of companions goes up much higher than it already is. Assuming the PE team's estimate is correct, anyway.

 

Now, there are some players who don't like companions in the first place. They believe that the Icewind Dale model in which the player creates the party is a superior one. There are other players who simply will not like a single one of the prewritten companions, even though they do like companions.

 

Obsidian cannot entirely satisfy the second group, because that would require more money and time than they have, but they can at least placate that group while satisfying the first by making all companions skippable and allowing the player to roll up his or her own party at the Adventurer's Hall instead. Which also has the nifty side effect of not forcing you to take companions you don't like with you on adventures, thus satisfying those who choose to take companions with them based on personality rather than stats. From an efficiency standpoint, the Adventurer's Hall is a genius idea; it satisfies the needs of multiple types of players while not costing a whole lot to implement. It isn't a perfect solution to every player's problem, but nothing is.

 

But there is no way you will get more prewritten companions with all the depth of the promised nine (heh, "The Promised Nine" sounds like the name of a fantasy novel) unless the Eternity team cuts a feature. Which they may, as game development is not an exact science, but they seem to be sticking to the plan so far.

 

The above may or may not look like six posts awkwardly mashed into one, but I am very very tired now and as such refuse to edit it. So be glad you got a succinct response to your post along with a load of rambling nonsense. I could have just written the nonsense, you know.

 

 

I don't see the problem in having 15-16 who are half as deep. I'm pretty sure you are being very subjective here, what I was talking about was simple math and I'm pretty sure I said that if a person doesn't like a character it doesn't matter how deep the character is (that was kind of a major point in my post which you skipped entirely).

 

^

 better to have more companions with less depth?

the answer is no.

 

So in depth. I think we can /thread this discussion.

 

 

This is like saying a newspaper can be good if it nails the headlines and writes only one sentence per article. A certain degree of development is needed to make the audience engage. Who people "like" is a very subjective thing, and not always fulfilling anyway. A worthier goal is to make characters worth engaging with, characters that contain layers worth peeling back and understanding. There are many party members in various games with personalities and motives I dislike. But working through that conflict is interesting and entertaining.

 

If Obsidian makes a slew of superficial characters rather than a few deep ones, I'm sure that, yes, they'd have a higher success rate with favorable first impressions. But focusing on a few characters instead makes it likely something interesting will happen after their one-liners. Would I like to see more than nine? Of course. But a story-heavy RPG needs quality characters to succeed, and I have to trust they've settled on the right number for that success.

 

 

Bad analogy. If a person doesn't like a character, they are just going to pick another. What you are saying is that it's ok to force the player in to those 9 characters and they will learn to like them. I think that is a bad way of thinking. As for an rpg needing deep companions to succeed, well there are obvious examples which prove otherwise,

 

Personally even characters I don't 'like' in the typical sense, I still fully appreciate if they are well developed. I'd actually consider if a disappointment if none of the companions didn't evoke some reactions other than liking from me. I feel like a really good array of companions will include enough diversity that you should always like a good number, but meet one or two who don't quite click for you - as long as they're not clicking due to who they are, as opposed to how they've been developed.

 

So what you are saying, when playing a game you would pick companions you don't like if there betters ones for you to pick.

 

9 will be okay.  I would have liked more myself but like losts of other posters are saying it comes down to a cost and quality issue.  Sawyer actually had a post somewhere on the forums specifically about how they did not like the way BG's had companions when they looked back at it because there were a ton of them.... but many were one dimensional and not that interesting.  They wanted all the PE characters to be capable of standing as great characters on their own and none of them to feel tacked on or boring.

 

Well they are making to game so we will see how it turns out, and whether it was a good call to make.

 

From BG2 I only remember Minsk Dynaheir, Sarevok and that elf girl mage/cleric. Minsk wascool, dynaheir damn annoying, sarevok was ok and that elfie was meeeehh.

 

From BG1....some of those form BG2 obviously and that's it.

 

From PS:T, every single one. Morte, Anna, Ignus, Dak'kon, Nordom,Vhailor, Fall-From-Grace. Each and single one of them had really deep personality and was memorable in their own way.

 

I will take any day of the week 9 really deep and varied CNPCs than bland and uninteresting ones.

 

From pst I only remember the floating scull and the succubus. What is your point? Depth=/=interesting. A lot more things need to click together then a character just having a deep story.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

For a character to be fun he doesn't have to have a deep story or a bunch of side quest, it's how he reacts to the world and events that are happening around him, for an example that is what made Minsc such a great character (or at least a memorable one). You are already going to have loads of quest in the game that are going to have depth and story, a character needs to add something different to the mix. I, personally, would rather add more characters with less/no quest, shallower stories, then a hand full that I may or may not like.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Sarex

[Eiphel]

Personally even characters I don't 'like' in the typical sense, I still fully appreciate if they are well developed. I'd actually consider if a disappointment if none of the companions didn't evoke some reactions other than liking from me. I feel like a really good array of companions will include enough diversity that you should always like a good number, but meet one or two who don't quite click for you - as long as they're not clicking due to who they are, as opposed to how they've been developed.

 

So what you are saying, when playing a game you would pick companions you don't like if there betters ones for you to pick.

I'm not totally sure what you're asking - Better how? Better as in I like them more? Or better in terms of mechanics? And the answer is I usually try and use every single companion in a game if I think they're all well developed. I'll have my favourites who are my 'go to' team, but I'll try and shuffle in other companions when it feels appropriate because I enjoy a well written character even if I don't like them. The difference is, even if I don't like them for their character (in universe), I can like them for their depth and quality of writing (out of universe).

[Sarex]

 

I'm not totally sure what you're asking - Better how? Better as in I like them more? Or better in terms of mechanics? And the answer is I usually try and use every single companion in a game if I think they're all well developed. I'll have my favourites who are my 'go to' team, but I'll try and shuffle in other companions when it feels appropriate because I enjoy a well written character even if I don't like them. The difference is, even if I don't like them for their character (in universe), I can like them for their depth and quality of writing (out of universe).

 

 

Yeah, I was talking about liking them more. So you played all the characters in BG in one play through? I never did that because I would only lose xp on them.

[Eiphel]

 

 

I'm not totally sure what you're asking - Better how? Better as in I like them more? Or better in terms of mechanics? And the answer is I usually try and use every single companion in a game if I think they're all well developed. I'll have my favourites who are my 'go to' team, but I'll try and shuffle in other companions when it feels appropriate because I enjoy a well written character even if I don't like them. The difference is, even if I don't like them for their character (in universe), I can like them for their depth and quality of writing (out of universe).

 

 

Yeah, I was talking about liking them more. So you played all the characters in BG in one play through? I never did that because I would only lose xp on them.

 

I haven't actually played BG1. (Horror of horrors! I've got a copy to play after Arcanum though.) But no, not neccesarily all in a single playthrough, depending how many there are, how the game is set up, etc. If I do a second playthrough of a game though I will usually specifically focus on a whole new team.

[Muschas1]

hall of heros is like an editor for companions with 0,0 soul and deep that cant be any argument pro the 9 companion thing!

 

BG2 had many good charakters: Minsc,imoen,edwin,anomen,aerie,jan,korgan,yoshimo etc.

[Lephys]

I don't see the problem in having 15-16 who are half as deep. I'm pretty sure you are being very subjective here, what I was talking about was simple math and I'm pretty sure I said that if a person doesn't like a character it doesn't matter how deep the character is (that was kind of a major point in my post which you skipped entirely).

Oh, did I skip that? I don't recall skipping it.

 

How's about this... what good is 15-16? What if you still didn't like one of those characters very much? Or, what if you only end up liking 9 of them, and they're all half as deep as they could've been? You mentioned that the Hall of Adventurers makes 0-depth companions. Well, it's not as if the choice to limit them to 9 makes INFINITE-DEPTH companions, so I don't understand your basis for the decision that splitting them in half (essentially) and spreading the depth around would DEFINITELY be a feasible solution.

 

Also, what if you don't like the companions when there are only 9, but you love a couple when there are 15-16? You're satisfied. Great. So all the people who still aren't satisfied can just suck it? How is YOUR plight more important than other people's? Where does this end? What if people want 15 "large" cities instead of 2, and we get 15 small cities, each with like 5 quests? Yayyy, that's so much better!

 

Does that not make sense? They're building a game objectively, and objectively, it's prudent to support the goal of the rest of their game (deep narrative and reactive world, etc.) with the companion designs. They're not just taking polls and designing each individual system according to a collective subjective opinion count. If you don't subjectively like the style of the Infinity Engine games and the spirit behind P:E, then the game isn't for you. It's that simple, really. And I don't mean that in any sort of hostile fashion.

 

The idea behind the Infinity Engine games wasn't "Let's make sure there are 20+ companions!". Just like the idea behind those games wasn't "don't have a dual-health/stamina system," or really any of the other unique facets of P:E.

 

The number of ANYTHING in the game is always going to be finite, and there's always a measurable amount of quality (even though it's not exact) for all of it. If they want to go for quality over quantity, then that's their decision. Just because you value the odds of your not-hating the companions more than you value the general quality of the companions no matter how they're designed doesn't mean it's anyone's job to figure out how to make sure you get appeased.

 

Like you said, that's largely subjective. They could make 100 companions and you might not really like any of them. How do they even know what kind of companions you like?

 

They say "Hey, we're gonna make this game if we get enough monies," and we go "Hey, that sounds like a good idea! I shall give you monies!". That's the only way they have any clue who likes ANYTHING about their game idea and who doesn't. That's why they didn't raise Kickstarter money for "Game # Alpha," THEN ask everyone who donated what kind of game they want Obsidian to make.

 

This isn't about whose subjective opinion is more correct, because we're not deciding whether or not there are even companions in the game, or how much quality should go into them. Obsidian decided that before they even got a dollar from any of us, and we gave them dollars based partially on that.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Lephys

[Iron_JG]

@Sarex

 

The analogy is perfect. If a newspaper has stories only consisting of one headline and one sentence, think of all the space it would have for more stories. By your logic, people would find that publication more fulfilling than one that has fewer, more detailed stories. That's not the case for most people. Again, a certain degree of content is needed to make the audience engage. Do you spend a lot of time reflecting over the quality time you spent with a Diablo 2 hireling? Or a pre-built toon from IWD? Is one of your favorite characters from a book or movie or whatever really one that had little dialogue or character development? I acknowledge they could add a few more characters and preserve an average level of interactivity, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that nine is the magic number for an above-average experience, which should be the goal.

 

You keep saying we need to "like" party members. I and other posters have tried to explain that is a simplistic word. I would also add that it takes depth for your assessment of a character to evolve; and that evolution is often rewarding. As to "forcing" characters on a player, that same logic can be applied to any NPC in the game. When you step into an author's world, you tacitly accept playing in their sandbox. Is making a few detailed characters more of a gamble than making a bunch of superficial characters? Sure. But they're rolling those dice to make a more memorable experience. If it takes them nine characters to give you three you connect with, isn't that more valuable than twice as many characters only half as interesting? NWN2 OC v. MOTB comes to mind...

 

As to your "RPG needing deep companions" point, I'd point out I said "story-heavy RPG." You can have a fun game with shallow characters, but a good story is less likely. The genre bears this out. BG2, KOTOR, NWN, ME and DA all are vastly more memorable and meaningful than Elder Scrolls and similar games. I say that as someone who put more than 100 hours into both Oblivion and Skyrim, along with who knows how many hours into Diablo, Torchlight, etc. Btw, was depth of characters not an expectation you had coming into this game? It seems a pretty explicit design goal.

[Sarex]

Brevity

 

That post is for Ffordesoon. Read my post again...

 

 

Brevity

 

Yeah, but the difference between you and me is what makes the character engaging for us. For me a character can have 0 back story and 0 side quests, but have reactivity to the world and events and some banter and it will be infinitely more engaging. So as I said, bad analogy.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Sarex

[TrashMan]

I say this i prefer the 6 they made in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer the the 12 they made in original NVN2 i prefer quality then number.

 

Meh...

I personally preferred NWN2 over MotB...inculding most of the characters.

 

 

The only MotB character I liked was that angel chick.

I can't even remember the name of any character from MoTB. HM..there was a bold psycho chick too that LUVED me even tough I never did anything.

 

From NWN2 I remember most of them.

Sand was cool.

Edited July 3, 2013 by TrashMan