What would PE look like if Obsidian catered to the worst of us?

[PrimeJunta]

You are getting cheeky with me, you and I both know that there is a difference betwen gaming a flaw in the system (that can be patched out) and wrong game design at the core of the game. So it is good practice to encourage the player to take the easiest route and reward him the same as for the hard route. Then what is the point of the hard route? From the 6 characters you have one will most likely have the skill set for the easiest solution in any quest.

 

As for you killing Firkraag on your first try, well you either went to him with end game character levels or you got lucky, 99% of the people didn't get lucky.

I kinda like if a game rewards smart play. I.e., accomplishing the maximum with the minimum expenditure of resources. So if you have one player who just charges in and beats the carp out of the dragon (expending a lot of resources in the process), and another player who pokes around every dark corner, does a lot of research, figures out the clever, less obvious solution, and manages to collapse the dungeon on the dragon (or permanently imprison it in the mountain, or dimensional warp it to the Great Darkness, or turn it into a newt, or convince it to join the adventuring party), I don't have any problem whatsoever with both getting the same reward and the second one ending up better off as his solution cost less.

 

Not to put too fine a point of it, but a lot of the complainers about PE appear to me to fall into one of two categories: players who just aren't very good at gaming but don't have the self-confidence to admit it and just play on Easy, and therefore want easily breakable, exploitable mechanics, and players who just aren't very smart and therefore want bigger rewards for dumb and costly solutions, thinking that it's not fair that the clever, less costly ways of solving problems are rewarded equally well.

 

Personally I have no problem with PE's designers ignoring both of these groups. In fact, the butthurt is kinda fun to watch.

[Sarex]

I kinda like if a game rewards smart play. I.e., accomplishing the maximum with the minimum expenditure of resources. So if you have one player who just charges in and beats the carp out of the dragon (expending a lot of resources in the process), and another player who pokes around every dark corner, does a lot of research, figures out the clever, less obvious solution, and manages to collapse the dungeon on the dragon (or permanently imprison it in the mountain, or dimensional warp it to the Great Darkness, or turn it into a newt, or convince it to join the adventuring party), I don't have any problem whatsoever with both getting the same reward and the second one ending up better off as his solution cost less.

Not to put too fine a point of it, but a lot of the complainers about PE appear to me to fall into one of two categories: players who just aren't very good at gaming but don't have the self-confidence to admit it and just play on Easy, and therefore want easily breakable, exploitable mechanics, and players who just aren't very smart and therefore want bigger rewards for dumb and costly solutions, thinking that it's not fair that the clever, less costly ways of solving problems are rewarded equally well.

 

Personally I have no problem with PE's designers ignoring both of these groups. In fact, the butthurt is kinda fun to watch.

 

You are funny. The funniest thing I read in your post is that you think that picking a dialog option makes you smart. Those "smart" ways of solving a quest are no where near as complicated as you make them out to be and to be honest they are plain boring/easy as they end up being a scavenger hunt (there are some instances where they were fun). You dude have too high of an opinion of your self, good luck with that.

 

99% people didn't even find him . With spells and abilities that have chance to instakill you need to be bit lucky, but as game has resistance drop spells that which add you killing change to near  100% they don't actually need that much luck.

 

Flawed game system is bad game design, giving option for player in RPG is not, especially if those options effect how story and world reacts towards pc.

 

How could 99% of people not find him when he is an end to a large quest, there is even a quest to kill him if you are a paladin, that seem very strange to me.

 

I am ok with letting a player chose his kind of playthrough, but I am against the game encouraging easy gameplay.

Edited October 19, 2013 by Sarex

[PrimeJunta]

Translation: touché.

[mcmanusaur]

Since when was character progression (i.e. XP) necessarily tied to player skill level in RPG's? If you're "better at the game", that's its own advantage and you don't need XP bonuses on top of that... It's true that the non-combat aspects of Project Eternity probably won't be as complex as the combat system (and for me that's too bad), but that's no reason to further devalue them.

Edited October 19, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Sarex]

Since when was character progression (i.e. XP) necessarily tied to player skill level in RPG's? If you're "better at the game", that's its own advantage and you don't need XP bonuses on top of that... It's true that the non-combat aspects of Project Eternity probably won't be as complex as the combat system (and for me that's too bad), but that's no reason to further devalue them.

 

I really am not devaluing them, they have their place in the game and in the instance where they prove to be harder (need more effort) to accomplish then the other paths, ie. combat, it should be rewarded accordingly. What is wrong with the gameplay we had in IE games where specking your character with diplomacy, sneaking, lock-picking, etc. used to unlock additional quest, more dialogues (which gave more xp) and other things.

[PrimeJunta]

Edit: never mind, he wasn't talking to me.

Edited October 19, 2013 by PrimeJunta

[Yonjuro]

 

And first time I fight against Firkraag my sorceress killed him with one hit from finger of death and second time my monk killed him with one hit of quivering palm. It wasn't until my third time when I was playing with assassin that  he actually was any sort of difficult woe to fight with.

 

 

 

 Oh, but thief traps bypass magic resistance (i.e. it is even easier with an assassin  ). 

 

 Anyway, as you pointed out, there are a lot of ways to take the danger out of that fight. As we all learned in Durlag's Tower (or in the Tomb of King Strohm, in Firkraag's dungeon), between the items you find in the dungeon and spells/scrolls/potions any fighter type can be healed by Firkraag's breath weapon by getting magical fire resistance above 100%. I think this was intended by the designers (capping resistances at 100% is easy enough if it was the intention).

 

 Any cleric can cast Resist Magic on Firkraag which lowers his MR and the lower level your party is, the better it works. Any mage can cast Strength on him which lowers his strength to 18/00, probably lower than at least one party member if you found or purchased  any strength enhancing items.  Both of these effects are stated in the spell descriptions.  The fight is really more a test of reading comprehension than anything else. 

 

 Why fight him without every available buff/debuff in place, any available traps set, creatures summoned etc.; you would get your ass handed to you  as your party ran around terrified   The game shouldn't even give you XP for that if you did win in the end by pure luck. 

[jethro]

 

What you are describing would need to be extremely convoluted to require the same amount of effort and I really doubt it that they have the time to give every quest that treatment. Also if those things are more difficult to accomplish then fighting, you should get more xp for the harder action. I am not a proponent of fighting, but that more difficult actions should garner more xp.

 

 

Ok, we are in the same dimension ;-). But I think this "difficulty-xp" (lets call it that for the moment) has a few problems:

 

1) A technical problem: If we assume different ways to solve the problem AND fighting isn't always the most difficult way then we still need objective xp (to award more xp to that solution instead of the kill) but the program has to evaluate exactly how you achieved the goal (this is not always easy) and each solution has to be judged concerning the difficulty level (just lots more work for the devs).

 

2) What constitutes difficulty is a very subjective thing. An example: One solution might need you to select the correct one out of 4 dialog options. The correct one might be to appeal to his family honor instead of to his own honor, his love for his country, or to his friendship. The only hint is a painting showing his family over the chimney where other people of his wealth would put an expensive art painting. Now how difficult is noticing this compared to killing Firkraag? After all, it still is only one simply dialog choice and you could hit it by chance in 25% of all cases. But it is something I would expect Sherlock Holmes to notice but not the average gamer. Maybe 1 out of 100 might connect the dots. To kill Firkraag, if I believe Eleronds finger of death story, the change is more like 66% on each try.

 

What is if your finger of death succeeds and you kill Firkraag with this one spell, lucky as it may be? Should the game reduce your xp because you had it easy in that fight? If not, why should the other player who needed much more than one spell to convice that dwarf now get less xp than you?

 

Maybe Firkraag wasn't so difficult but you just didn't find the right way to fight him. So you needed 15 minutes real time and all your resources and you kill him with your last fighter at 5 health. Should the program reward you for that? Surely not, you could have cast X and done Y and the fight would have been much easier. So how should the designer judge this fight of yours? 

 

4) Are we judging the player or the player character(s)? Normally I would say the PCs, because they get the xp for what they are doing, not the player. And for example persuading a dwarf is (while the player just selects the persuasion option) in-game a long discussion where the PC doing the talking is carefully flirting around the subject and hinting at possibilities. That lockpick check on the safe the player starts with one keystroke is in-game 5 minutes of hard work for which the character had to train hundreds of hours. Lets not even talk about a stealth solution. So if we judge the character you would be surprised how often killing would be the easy way out for your party of trained killers.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be more of the opinion that we have to judge the player instead. But most fights are trivial. Attack the healers first, then mages, keep your clothies out of range of the enemy, 90% of fights could be done by 15 year old kids. Finding that picture from the example above and making the correct deduction? Not a chance in a million for a 15 year old. Now, do you like to be judged in your gaming? Maybe the designers thought fighting that dragon is easy and the deduction 10 times as difficult. You feel so proud killing that dragon, but sorry, player, the designers tell you, you took the easy way out. Think about it, should the game designer judge you? Especially if he has different ideas about what constitutes difficulty? Is this an exam or a game?

 

5) The meta-gaming conundrum: Lets assume you as the player don't want to loose out on a lot of xp. How do you know which solution gets you enough xp? You find the dwarf, he offers to collapse the cave. Did you do enough to satisfy the game designers? "Oh no, it seemed easy. Too easy. Maybe I should sneak in and out of the cave a few times before letting the dwarf do his deed. That enough? Oh, crap, lets play it safe and kill that dragon". Maybe the designers thought the dwarf quest was the difficult one. You'll never find out.

 

6) Lets assume fighting is really the most difficult way. Everything else is just multiple-choice easy crap. And since we have difficulty-xp only the fighter gets maximum xp, someone going for diplomatic solutions would get a fraction of that (a situation not too different from many existing RPGs). Now how to balance this? If we balance for the fighter path the diplomatic path becomes impossible because soon the diplomat is way behind the fighter in xp. If we balance for the diplomat or something inbetween, the fighter will soon feel underwhelmed because his fights get too easy. This is it. If you want difficulty-xp and you think fighting is the most difficult thing, forget multiple solutions. The game designer can't balance that. So either forget difficulty-xp or forget multiple solutions. Or do level-scaling of monsters AND other solution difficulties. But really, nobody wants level-scaling.

Edited October 19, 2013 by jethro

[Chairchucker]

I think explicitly rewarding the player for taking the more difficult option, as granting more experience for going into battle than for poisoning his food supply might be, is dumb. If I were playing an actual PnP RPG and I chose to go into battle with a dragon because I thought poisoning might net me, the player, more experience, I would absolutely expect the DM to:

a. Slap me down for metagaming, and

b. Punish me for intentionally making my character make what would be, for him, a stupid decision.

[AGX-17]

An AO rating?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

An AO rating?

In addition to being able to kill children, the player could molest them in the name of ****ting on political correctness.

[Sarex]

@jethro

 

The Firkraag story with the finger of death is probably a stroke of luck(or he is lying), as for the other stories here they only happened at a high character level (near the end of the game) or they just used a guide. Now why do I say that, lower magic resist is a level 6 spell that costs 10000 gp and can be bought at only one place (early game) and drops only once later in the game. On my first playthrough, many winters ago, I fought him the first time I met him (I thought that the quest was set up so that you either fight him or **** out and move on(can't come back)) now my whole party was low level and the best tactic I came up with was to summon the maximum amount of beast as cannon fodder and rotate my characters to beat him to death. That was hard as balls and took me a "few" reloads to make it work. I needed to figure out how to position my casters, where to put my archer and how long can my paladin, fighter, and cleric tank him and not to mention the per-buffing of the party. So yeah you could make it easy, I know I did on my later playthroughs, but for me it's that first fight that I remember when I think about Firkraag.

 

Another good example for on kill xp, is the Beholder layer in the underdark. First playthrough I cast mass invisibility, ran through the whole dungeon and killed the 3 beholders I had to. Missed a boat load of xp, but that was the only way I could beat them. Later playthroughs? I bought the Baldurians shield, and summoned high level elementals and steamed through it.(I finished all the the quests before the underdark and was a much higher level then on my first playthrough)

 

But maybe the best example that I can think of that demonstrates my point, is the hardest enemy in the game (except for the undead lich) the imprisoned one. You had 2 options, you could kill him which was hard to do, or you could read helms scroll and just imprison him again. Killing him gave 100k xp per character, reading the scroll gave you 80k xp per character plus 25k global xp. Would you argue that reading a scroll is the hard thing to do?

 

I don't know, a lot of people here think that Obsidian is going to make other options for playing through a quest smart and complex, but I fell that they are going to be simple fetch quests that will put you out of your way for a short while and some dialog option that you need to pick, which for anyone who reads the text is easy to figure out and of course let's not forget sneaking by. The sad thing is that, this kind of a game is already being made (Torment), which to me (and lots of other people) was the worst of all the IE games (had a great story line, but the gameplay was atrocious). Why force this game in to the mold of Torment, instead of focusing on what made the rest of the IE games great.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Sarex

[Malekith]

 Why force this game in to the mold of Torment, instead of focusing on what made the rest of the IE games great.

Because for the other half of the backers Torment is the best IE  game.  Among the IE games Torment is the second most popular behind BG2.

And even if i personaly love BG2 (behind Torment but i still love it), i have seen many posters here who didn't liked the rest of IE games and donated ONLY for the Torment part of the deal.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Malekith

[Sarex]

Because for the other half of the backers Torment is the best IE  game.  Among the IE games Torment is the second most popular behind BG2.

And even if i personaly love BG2 (behind Torment but i still love it), i have seen many posters here who didn't liked the rest of IE games and donated ONLY for the Torment part of the deal.

 

Torment was a commercial failure, so going by the sales it wasn't that popular and just because the Torment fans are one of the loudest I met doesn't mean half the people on kickstater liked it. I guess we will see when the game comes out, just how many of you Torment fans there really were.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Sarex

[Malekith]

 

Because for the other half of the backers Torment is the best IE  game.  Among the IE games Torment is the second most popular behind BG2.

And even if i personaly love BG2 (behind Torment but i still love it), i have seen many posters here who didn't liked the rest of IE games and donated ONLY for the Torment part of the deal.

 

Torment was a commercial failure, so going by the sales it wasn't that popular and just because the Torment fans are one of the loudest I met doesn't mean half the people on kickstater liked it. I guess we will see when the game comes out, just how many of you Torment fans there really were.

 

Nope. The rumors that it was commercial failure are overblown. Torment sold well enough, and actualy sold better than Fallout. It just was way less than BG sold. IWDs didn't sold that well either compaired to BG.

But that was then. Torment has critical acclaim(more than BG), is in all Top 10 list of best RPG of all time, continues to sell well 15 years later(second best selling game on GoG behind BG2, so the "sold poorly" arguement no longer applies), and the Torment kickstarter gathered the same amount of money (a little more actualy) than PE. So Obsidian could have ditched the rest IE games and go for Torment only and they still would had get the same amount of money.

If there is a weak link among the IE games, that is the IWD series and not Torment. (And BG is completely overshadowed by BG2)

Edited October 20, 2013 by Malekith

[Sarex]

Nope. The rumors that it was commercial failure are overblown. Torment sold well enough, and actualy sold better than Fallout. It just was way less than BG sold. IWDs didn't sold that well either compaired to BG.

But that was then. Torment has critical acclaim(more than BG), is in all Top 10 list of best RPG of all time, continues to sell well 15 years later(second best selling game on GoG behind BG2, so the "sold poorly" arguement no longer applies), and the Torment kickstarter gathered the same amount of money (a little more actualy) than PE. So Obsidian could have ditched the rest IE games and go for Torment only and they still would had get the same amount of money.

If there is a weak link among the IE games, that is the IWD series and not Torment. (And BG is completely overshadowed by BG2)

 

Not one thing you said is true. It failed to reach the numbers that where set for it, so yes it was a commercial failure. Not only was it not overblown but it barely covered it's production cost.

 

As for having critical acclaim, I don't think one site put it above the BG series. Where are you coming up with this information, the argument still stands, that it sells now in small numbers and cheap on GoG does in no way benefit Infinity Ward which as we all know is gone. Most of the games ever made continue to sell, but the companies look to make back the money they spent and make a healthy profit in the year after the games release, all the sales after that are minute and are not counted towards the commercial success of the game. As for the success of the Torment kickstarter, well they worked off of the hype that P:E and Wastelands so the numbers it made where bigger, which is not to say that Torment didn't have it's fans.

 

IWD series was the culmination of IE gamplay, the place where it lacked was story and linearity, so no I don't think it was a weak link. In torrment you could have removed the gameplay and just made a visual novel and it would have still worked.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Sarex

[Chairchucker]

There are a few reasons Torment didn't initially do so well sales-wise; usual theories seem to suggest that it is more down to the weird looking protagonist and setting and clunky combat, moreso than the focus on non-combat resolution to problems. I have heard that word of mouth meant that it eventually didn't do too badly.

 

The idea that introducing elements of Torment like story, dialogue and non-combat problem resolution will introduce the combat issues that also had don't make a great deal of sense. Torment is by no means the only game that had these, hell even Icewind Dale let you sneak past encounters (although it then also gave you combat XP for coming back and finishing the job, which is specifically the kind of scenario that Sawyer suggested removing combat XP would solve.) so calling non-combat resolutions to problems a 'Torment' thing is kind of underselling the other IE games.

[Sarex]

There are a few reasons Torment didn't initially do so well sales-wise; usual theories seem to suggest that it is more down to the weird looking protagonist and setting and clunky combat, moreso than the focus on non-combat resolution to problems. I have heard that word of mouth meant that it eventually didn't do too badly.

 

The idea that introducing elements of Torment like story, dialogue and non-combat problem resolution will introduce the combat issues that also had don't make a great deal of sense. Torment is by no means the only game that had these, hell even Icewind Dale let you sneak past encounters (although it then also gave you combat XP for coming back and finishing the job, which is specifically the kind of scenario that Sawyer suggested removing combat XP would solve.) so calling non-combat resolutions to problems a 'Torment' thing is kind of underselling the other IE games.

 

That is just gaming the system, which can easily be patched out. I am not hating on Torment, but to be honest I don't want it's gameplay being mixed in to P:E. Story telling wise there are great stuff that could be added in but game play wise it sucked so much.

[Chairchucker]

Not one thing you said is true. It failed to reach the numbers that where set for it, so yes it was a commercial failure. Not only was it not overblown but it barely covered it's production cost.

 

As for having critical acclaim, I don't think one site put it above the BG series. Where are you coming up with this information, the argument still stands, that it sells now in small numbers and cheap on GoG does in no way benefit Infinity Ward which as we all know is gone. Most of the games ever made continue to sell, but the companies look to make back the money they spent and make a healthy profit in the year after the games release, all the sales after that are minute and are not counted towards the commercial success of the game. As for the success of the Torment kickstarter, well they worked off of the hype that P:E and Wastelands so the numbers it made where bigger, which is not to say that Torment didn't have it's fans.

 

IWD series was the culmination of IE gamplay, the place where it lacked was story and linearity, so no I don't think it was a weak link. In torrment you could have removed the gameplay and just made a visual novel and it would have still worked.

Sales talk

 

http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=55 Chris Avellone explicitly states that Torment made a profit, albeit a small one. Suggests marketing is responsible for this less successful performance.

 

Critical Acclaim (noting that Malekith explicitly stated that its acclaim, amongst IE games, trailed behind BG2)

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-greatest-games-of-all-time-planescape-torment/1100-6135401/ Gamespot thinks it's a pretty good game.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/540/540546p1.html Gamespy too.

http://au.top100.ign.com/2007/ign_top_game_71.html IGN thought it was pretty good. BG2 came 43, BTW. No other IE games - IWD included - on this particular list.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/194593/features/pc-gamers-top-100-part-4/ PC Gamer called it the ninth best game ever. (Didn't check all 100 but no other IE games are in the top 25.)

 

Seriously, doesn't take a whole lot of link hunting off of the main Wikipedia page to find that critics really liked it.

[jethro]

@jethro

 

The Firkraag story with the finger of death is probably a stroke of luck(or he is lying), as for the other stories here they only happened at a high character level (near the end of the game) or they just used a guide. Now why do I say that, lower magic resist is a level 6 spell that costs 10000 gp and can be bought at only one place (early game) and drops only once later in the game. On my first playthrough, many winters ago, I fought him the first time I met him (I thought that the quest was set up so that you either fight him or **** out and move on(can't come back)) now my whole party was low level and the best tactic I came up with was to summon the maximum amount of beast as cannon fodder and rotate my characters to beat him to death. That was hard as balls and took me a "few" reloads to make it work. I needed to figure out how to position my casters, where to put my archer and how long can my paladin, fighter, and cleric tank him and not to mention the per-buffing of the party. So yeah you could make it easy, I know I did on my later playthroughs, but for me it's that first fight that I remember when I think about Firkraag.

Yes, but do you remember it because you got lots of xp or because it was a legendary fight? And I don't contest that finger of death may be great luck. There is still the question what xp to give the player if he had that luck?

 

But maybe the best example that I can think of that demonstrates my point, is the hardest enemy in the game (except for the undead lich) the imprisoned one. You had 2 options, you could kill him which was hard to do, or you could read helms scroll and just imprison him again. Killing him gave 100k xp per character, reading the scroll gave you 80k xp per character plus 25k global xp. Would you argue that reading a scroll is the hard thing to do?

No. Would you argue that your victory tasted bitter at that time because you thought of all the other players that got the same xp for just using the scroll? Which you normally shouldn't even have known about?

 

I don't know, a lot of people here think that Obsidian is going to make other options for playing through a quest smart and complex, but I fell that they are going to be simple fetch quests that will put you out of your way for a short while and some dialog option that you need to pick, which for anyone who reads the text is easy to figure out and of course let's not forget sneaking by. The sad thing is that, this kind of a game is already being made (Torment), which to me (and lots of other people) was the worst of all the IE games (had a great story line, but the gameplay was atrocious). Why force this game in to the mold of Torment, instead of focusing on what made the rest of the IE games great.

Look at the statistics that were posted, IWD (which had the focus on combat) was far behind BG and Torment when the backers were asked about their preferences. And BG also had multiple ways to solve quests. Obsidian tries hard to be please everyone with PE, and everyone will have to accept that it will not be exactly what he wants. If Saywers RPG system works and PE is as good as we hope, you should have epic tactical hard fights but you will have to accept that others could solve some fights differently, probably even with just one dialog option, and get the same xp for it. That's the compromise. Torment-fans will have to accept that the story won't be weird with philosophical undertones in texts of epic lengths in a strange world but a rather conventional fantasy story. Without that compromise PE would have to be built with a lot less money.

Edited October 20, 2013 by jethro

[Sarex]

 

Not one thing you said is true. It failed to reach the numbers that where set for it, so yes it was a commercial failure. Not only was it not overblown but it barely covered it's production cost.

 

As for having critical acclaim, I don't think one site put it above the BG series. Where are you coming up with this information, the argument still stands, that it sells now in small numbers and cheap on GoG does in no way benefit Infinity Ward which as we all know is gone. Most of the games ever made continue to sell, but the companies look to make back the money they spent and make a healthy profit in the year after the games release, all the sales after that are minute and are not counted towards the commercial success of the game. As for the success of the Torment kickstarter, well they worked off of the hype that P:E and Wastelands so the numbers it made where bigger, which is not to say that Torment didn't have it's fans.

 

IWD series was the culmination of IE gamplay, the place where it lacked was story and linearity, so no I don't think it was a weak link. In torrment you could have removed the gameplay and just made a visual novel and it would have still worked.

Sales talk

 

http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=55 Chris Avellone explicitly states that Torment made a profit, albeit a small one. Suggests marketing is responsible for this less successful performance.

 

Critical Acclaim (noting that Malekith explicitly stated that its acclaim, amongst IE games, trailed behind BG2)

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-greatest-games-of-all-time-planescape-torment/1100-6135401/ Gamespot thinks it's a pretty good game.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/540/540546p1.html Gamespy too.

http://au.top100.ign.com/2007/ign_top_game_71.html IGN thought it was pretty good. BG2 came 43, BTW. No other IE games - IWD included - on this particular list.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/194593/features/pc-gamers-top-100-part-4/ PC Gamer called it the ninth best game ever. (Didn't check all 100 but no other IE games are in the top 25.)

 

Seriously, doesn't take a whole lot of link hunting off of the main Wikipedia page to find that critics really liked it.

 

 

No one said it made no profit, I only said it was a commercial failure.

 

He said torment was rated better then BG, which as can be seen from you links it is not and in the one it is, this is the comment on it "It's still a fantastic narrative experience.", no mention of gameplay, only that it is not a cliche story. In fact all the reviews go in the same line of though, that it was "A fantastic narrative experience". Also no where did I say that the critics didn't like it. Please read trough my post before replaying.

 

 

Yes, but do you remember it because you got lots of xp or because it was a legendary fight? And I don't contest that finger of death may be great luck. There is still the question what xp to give the player if he had that luck?

 

No. Would you argue that your victory tasted bitter at that time because you thought of all the other players that got the same xp for just using the scroll? Which you normally shouldn't even have known about?

 

Look at the statistics that were posted, IWD (which had the focus on combat) was far behind BG and Torment when the backers were asked about their preferences. And BG also had multiple ways to solve quests. Obsidian tries hard to be please everyone with PE, and everyone will have to accept that it will not be exactly what he wants. If Saywers RPG system works and PE is as good as we hope, you should have epic tactical hard fights but you will have to accept that others could solve some fights differently, probably even with just one dialog option, and get the same xp for it. That's the compromise. Torment-fans will have to accept that the story won't be weird with philosophical undertones in texts of epic lengths in a strange world but a rather conventional fantasy story. Without that compromise PE would have to be built with a lot less money.

 

 

-I remember it because it was a great fight, but I would have remembered it even more if I didn't get xp for killing him, I would would have been royally pissed. Luck shouldn't be punished, if it happens to you great, but I think the chances of this happening are so low it's not even worth considering.

 

-First time I used the scroll, because I couldn't beat him. Second time I decided to give it my all because I had played the game much better and tbh I would have felt cheated if I didn't at least get more xp (because he didn't give any items).

 

-How many people voted in that poll, and how many people were in the kickstarter, as I said Torment fans are, in my experience, the loudest.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Sarex

[Chairchucker]

Making a profit is the opposite of being a commercial failure.

 

At least one of those links does clearly place Torment ahead of Baldur's Gate. The first Baldur's Gate doesn't even appear on most of these lists, which is why he said "BG is overshadowed by BG2." Torment has more critical acclaim than Baldur's Gate. The game. The game called Baldur's Gate. That's what he said. That's why BG2 and PST are still consistently showered with praise by critics and the rest of the IE games are "Oh yeah they made these other games too, they were also good I guess."

[Sarex]

Making a profit is the opposite of being a commercial failure.

 

At least one of those links does clearly place Torment ahead of Baldur's Gate. The first Baldur's Gate doesn't even appear on most of these lists, which is why he said "BG is overshadowed by BG2." Torment has more critical acclaim than Baldur's Gate. The game. The game called Baldur's Gate. That's what he said. That's why BG2 and PST are still consistently showered with praise by critics and the rest of the IE games are "Oh yeah they made these other games too, they were also good I guess."

 

Don't be daft. So the game cost 1 million dollars to make, but it made 1 million 10 thousand dollars, so hey it's a success because it made a profit. It's not just about getting out of black the numbers need to be big enough to make an impact.  (Disclaimer: the numbers used in this explanation are made up and used strictly for educational purposes and as such do not represent the actual sales numbers of P:T).

 

When I say BG, I mean Baldur's Gate as a series, not just part 1&2. Baldur's Gate is the best game over all, Torment had the best narrative experience, IWD had the best gameplay, this is all widely accepted.

[jethro]

-How many people voted in that poll, and how many people were in the kickstarter, as I said Torment fans are, in my experience, the loudest.

A poll can be representative even if you ask only a part of the people. Even the loudest people have only one vote in a poll. Now just some polls to show what people on this forum think (and I give you my word these were the only ones I found, I didn't dump any that showed contrary evidence):

 

First a poll to show that people on this forum have played all the ID games somewhat equally:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60755-which-infinity-engine-games-did-you-play/?mode=show

 

Now the polls about preference:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61718-favorite-game-and-which-game-do-you-hope-project-eternity-is-most-like/?mode=show

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61810-gameplay-or-story/?mode=show

 

Now a poll about what brought the backers to PE. It is a bit representative of what money Obsidian would have lost if they didn't court the corresponding people:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60125-which-game-hook-brought-you-to-project-eternity-and-interests-you-the-most/

 

Now polls can mislead, if the question is leading, if only an unrepresentative cross-section of relevant people can vote or is incentiviced to vote or too few are asked. None of these seem to apply, at least not that totally wrong results would come of it. If you still believe that among backers IWD fans are as numerous as Torments (the only relevant demographic in this discussion), I don't know what to say, except bring some evidence, any, even one link please.

[Chairchucker]

Yes, yes it is a success if it made 10 thousand dollars profit. However as you acknowledge, you made those figures up. If a company was able to continually make products that made small profits, they would continue to be commercially viable companies. That is how commerce works, if you make a profit it is good.

 

You might mean it as a series, but since Malekith delineated specifically between the two main games in the series, perhaps it was silly to assume he meant the same.

 

And now you're making facts up, where are you getting that it is 'widely accepted' that IWD had the best gameplay? If you're going to try to use an appeal to authority or an appeal to the masses in an argument, you could at least provide the authority, so I could criticise the use of the argument instead of just that the argument isn't even supported.