Killing Backers as a way to farm early equipment and get some gold

[Ceranai]

 

Okay then.

 

So...basically...you're pissed off because the backer NPC's break your immersion by disrupting your ability to use your knowledge of tropes to metagame.

No, I am not pissed off. I am merely pointing out a fairly obvious, though minor, problem with the named backer NPCs.

 

If we ignore your failure to understand this, your general point about how it prevents me from using my knowledge of how the game genre works is spot on. Breaking genre conventions is not something to do lightly. There's a reason that all those no-name NPCs are generally not given names in CRPGs, and it isn't because the designers can't think up names. It is because they know that obscuring what is important and what is not in the name of immersion results in players interacting with everybody and his donkey to find out who is important and who is not, and that doing that and mostly getting back negatives until they luck out and click on somebody who has something to say that is important is something that is only attractive to the most obsessive compulsive gamers.

 

Which is why all the irrelevant non-backer NPCs in PoE have generic names, because Obsidian's designers aren't incompetent.

 

yes but it only took me reading abour 3 souls before I figured out they were optional. every now and again i will read one and generally i find them entertaining but the fact that they are all yellow makes it pretty easy to filter out. Hell I didnt even know they were backers till i came on these forums.

[Prideaux]

Apparently, killing backers (the NPCs with yellow textbox) have no negative consequences, except when other legitimate NPCs are inside the line of sight. They grant some decent loot early on, and you get the pleasure of defiling the avatars of someone else. I personally think that all these colorful Marty Stus and Mary Sues are distracting and feel completely out of place, and until a mod that removes them appears, I will just pretend I am polishing the game through purges.

 

no thanks I would rather respect their comtribution in making this game possible and gear and money is rather easy to come by as it is... then again I never play an evil aligment

[NoxNoctum]

Wait a second -- are all characters with those "soul backgrounds" that you can read backer NPCs? 

 

Anyways I've found them very well written so I don't think it detracts. It does confuse though - since they look like someone that will be plot critical.

Edited April 3, 2015 by NoxNoctum

[Ceranai]

 

 

Are they really more 'immersion breaking' than just going around slaughtering people in villages for nothing more than their loot? 

 

But... the loot...

 

 

... is their death sentence!!

 

I dont make a habit of killing backers but i was curious if anyone knows any particular backers that drop good items?

[Ichthyic]

 

You can murder non-backer NPCs too, if you're not caught. 

Ah, but which will give him the most satisfaction?

 

I find it rather disturbing that people even CAN feel satisified by killing an in game NPC.... that's some pretty irrational hate.

[Ichthyic]

 

 

Are they really more 'immersion breaking' than just going around slaughtering people in villages for nothing more than their loot? I figured out they were the backer NPCs fairly quickly and then just proceeded to ignore them.

 

You buggers. Of course, now that I know you can pretty much kill them with impunity, and since 'immersion' isn't something that's tenuous and fragile to me...

The main problem with them is that they break one of the fundamental conventions of CRPGs - that those people who are unimportant don't get names and that characters with names should be talked to if possible. In other words, that unimportant background characters whose main job is to be there such that a setting doesn't seem unpopulated are, at the same time, clearly distinguishable such that players don't waste time on interacting with them.

 

By giving them names, even if with a different backlight, you are indicating to players that these are important and should be talked to as. To make it worse, it requires your very special soul reading ability and plays a sound and graphic effect when you do it, you know, just like that very important event right at the start of the game. Players who don't start out knowing that it is a waste of time unless you want to read flavour stories that are irrelevant to the setting and to the game's story are going to spend a lot of time reading/skimming them and activating soul reading just in case this next one is the one that actually does something. Eventually they will eventually learn it, but even then it adds to the time it takes for a player to get a quick view of who are important in a given setting, because the mind is much better at automatically sorting people by whether they have generic names that appear all over the place, like four commoners next to each other, or unique names, than by sorting them by whether their names have one backlight or another.

 

It is a completely different issue with tombstones/testimonials. Those are normally used in CRPGs to list jokes, silly verse, RIPs, and real world references and not to provide useful information except in the cases where there's a specific mission to find some useful information on a tombstone, and they aren't spread out everywhere but collected in a few locations.

 

Fleshing out the game with named characters that are utterly irrelevant to the plot instead of just adding a bunch more generic people with professions rather than names was, as far as I am concerned, a bad idea where gameplay is concerned.

 

It helped rake in the money, though, so there is that. It just makes for an ever so slightly worse game.

 

 

I totally agree.

 

I came to this game unaware of its Kick Starter history. As I started playing I saw these yellow NPC's and figured I was using my plot related power in some plot advancing way. I thought maybe looking into peoples souls (or w/e) would be linked to the game some way (side quests, future events, what have you). I read a lot of the back stories until I just got bored of it (it was honestly rather boring to read so much about so little). After reading this thread, and finding out what they really are, I am rather sad I wasted my time with this.

 

And they always stand out to me because I like running with tab on to see what is intractable, and now that I know they are backers its a bit, I don't know, off putting I guess. I really would not mind having them hidden or something.

 

You know what you should do next?  Visit all the cemetaries in the game and read every grave stone!

 

there is a puzzle hidden in some of the gravestone texts, and once you put it together, it tells you where to look for a hidden stash.

 

 

[Itasko]

LoL. In my party thing the strongest character I've killed is my own companion NPC 

[Mirandel]

IE Mod for Pillars of Eternity unlocks a console command: DisableBackerDialogues true   

so, you would not be confused by those NPC. Just saying.

[Matuse]

Whether or not you can kill any given BNPC is really variable. Any of them that are near regular NPCs are out - the regular NPC will aggro on you (and then anyone anywhere near that NPC, eventually the whole zone). You can get some of them inside buildings if they are the only ones there (there's a couple in Gilded Vale like this, in a house in the northern part of the town). Outside of that, it's a little wonky. In the northern bridge to Defiance Bay that was washed out, there are 3 NPCs at the foot of the bridge. If you kill the one on the left who is standing near some boxes of fish, there's no problem. But if you kill the two standing right next to him, you take Defiance Bay rep hits, and the guard NPC at the middle of the bridge aggros on you.

 

So, if you're going to do this, I'd save before each fight in case things go south. And you might also expect that Obsidian will be tweaking this in a patch. Best thing about killing the backer NPCs that I've seen is that you get their clothes. They have several kinds of 0 recovery penalty clothing that is different from what you find normally. Nice for a bit of customization. I haven't found any that drop any really nice gear, but I also haven't tried mass murder to see what the options are.

[Ninjerk]

You can kill the Moon Godlike BNPC just east of the Temple of Eothas with no reputation hit and no one else in town becomes hostile to you.  If you go into the BNPC house in the N-NW part of Gilded Vale you can kill them for a minor reputation hit for each kill.  It's pretty inconsistent.  Same thing happens when stealing.  In either the BNPC house or Ingroed's house (I forget which one), you're attacked if caught stealing, while you can steal from the "Inn Guest" in the 2nd floor of the Black Hound without consequence.

[Pepperjack]

Dang, wish I'd thought about this way back when we were turning these things in. I could've gone with something like...

 

Lord Farthing Glitterpants

"Half-blind, asthmatic fellow that loves nothing more than to stand alone, far away from anyone else, in the fields of Gilded Vale while wearing a full suit of plate mail, polishing his collection of quality arquebuses, and carrying about his lucky sack of gold."

[Matuse]

Aha! I found one with decent drops. In Copperlane there's one named Visceris who wanders around near the bridge between the Inn and the zone boundry to Brackenbury. He's actually pretty tough, it took my groups of level 3s a couple of tries to kill him. He's a druid with a ton of HP. He drops fine hide armor, and a "Stag Helm" which gives +2 Athletics and +1 Dex.

 

There's a commoner that also wanders in the area. Don't fight Visceris with the commoner nearby, or he'll aggro on you.

[Ceranai]

Aha! I found one with decent drops. In Copperlane there's one named Visceris who wanders around near the bridge between the Inn and the zone boundry to Brackenbury. He's actually pretty tough, it took my groups of level 3s a couple of tries to kill him. He's a druid with a ton of HP. He drops fine hide armor, and a "Stag Helm" which gives +2 Athletics and +1 Dex.

 

There's a commoner that also wanders in the area. Don't fight Visceris with the commoner nearby, or he'll aggro on you.

Thanks for reminding me of that guy, i have te helm in my chanter play through but fogot who i killed to get it

[Ceranai]

Dang, wish I'd thought about this way back when we were turning these things in. I could've gone with something like...

 

Lord Farthing Glitterpants

"Half-blind, asthmatic fellow that loves nothing more than to stand alone, far away from anyone else, in the fields of Gilded Vale while wearing a full suit of plate mail, polishing his collection of quality arquebuses, and carrying about his lucky sack of gold."

This would have made me laugh so hard as i killed you every time i met you XD

[snow0815]

Any way to spot if a character is a backer NPC without actually "talking" to them? There are too many, would be nice to just skip them.

[Ceranai]

Any way to spot if a character is a backer NPC without actually "talking" to them? There are too many, would be nice to just skip them.

Yellow names, i found it pretty easy to just ignore the once i realised they were just extra lore thrown in, i mean i barely read the text for the main quest so... lol

[Ninjerk]

Any way to spot if a character is a backer NPC without actually "talking" to them? There are too many, would be nice to just skip them.

Hold 'Tab' down and they have gold nameplates with funny fantasy-novel names.

[Kromzor]

 

There are too many God-Like backer NPCs

Well the lore does say God-Like are often killed on sight, no?  So I fail to see how this breaks anyone's immersion.  Sure, looking at the game for the first time you probably assumed, like I did, that they were killed because of their ugly faces... but as we now know they are actually killed because they're born with treasure!

[Rune100]

I must've done something horrible wrong. I killed the backer NPCs on the top of the Inn and nothing bad seemed to happen, but when I reached the temple of Eothas, I got assaulted by a child? He/She even survived a direct hit from my arbalest, so that's kinda impressive I guess.

[snow0815]

Thanks, read them all as they seemed important what with the weird vision effect and all but the stories just tend to be long, distracting and silly...

[kalyndrel]

Oh, thanks for the info Voss. 

 

I was reading all that stuff from former lives because I thought it's relevant for the later story.

I also thought they were relevant some how. Good to know I can just ignore or kill them.

[Musluk]

The loot gods demand a sacrifice, and what better sacrifice than golden named people loitering about?