I'm calling it quits

[Emptiness]

Bye bye! Yourself. I'll see what's in the latest patch thank you!   

 

So, less calling it quits and more a dramatic attempt to convince Obsidian to redesign the entire game to your preferences in the next patch.

 

 

Mind you I am 40, so a younger child might persist.

 

Has "give me my way or I'm taking my toys and going home" been working for you all this time?

 

Please understand, I'm not criticizing your feedback; that's what this forum is for.  You opinions are just as valuable as mine, or anyone else's.

 

Your presentation, however, is something that has been tried online since the early days, and it never really works because no one cares if one person goes away.  We all have our own toys now that we are grown up, and there are literally millions of other people to play with.  If you have valid points to make they will stand on their own without the need to add weight to them with empty threats.

[Nasdaq7]

The game is great. The game is OK. Keep up the good work...I enjoyed this game more than most other games. But I can see someone might quit at those bottlenecks. So man up! And discuss it - look at it.

 

Just remove those restrictions on the areas where users cannot go to because they have to complete some main quest.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nasdaq7

[Seeders]

Well, you can't please everyone.  You had some good suggestions (and more of everything will be coming in expansions), but your reason for quitting was surprisingly ... dumb?  It's pretty easy to uncover new areas, just go to the side of the map adjacent to the place you want to go.  Not sure what else you'd expect or why you'd want everything explored already.  Also, unlocking areas after completing a quest is a very standard game mechanic that isn't bad design.  If you listen to the developer commentary (which I recommend), they touch on that early on.  They call them "Gates" and they exist for a reason, though they did their best to have as few as possibile.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Seeders

[Emptiness]

The bottlenecks are necessary because a story is being told.  They are also necessary because the foes you face in this game do not automatically adjust to your level.  You may think you want to walk your level 2 character over to Twin Elms, but the things you will encounter on the way there will kill you with a glance.  If you did manage to get there alive then you'd be confronted with one broken quest after another, as you would find yourself interacting with story elements that had not been introduced yet.  Without spoilers I can't give any specific examples, but I can illustrate with a generic example not related to the game: imagine a game that presents the player with a murder mystery and allows them to follow the clues to determine the identity of the murderer - what you are asking for is the equivalent of being able to walk to the end of the story and see the murderer being arrested before the murder even takes place in the game.

 

Of course, if this game had been designed as a sandbox game then you'd have what you want without a problem.  You'd be able to walk to any area and it wouldn't mess up any quests because the quest system would have been designed to gate the quests behind events instead of behind locations.  If you want to criticize PoE for not using that design, that's a fair criticism.  It's too late to change it, though.  It isn't just a matter of removing the bottlenecks; they'd have to redesign the entire quest system and every area related to the main quest in order to make that change.  (Also, they'd have to make every encounter scale to the level of your character.)  Realistically, Obsidian isn't going to do that; they're going to move forward with what they've got.  Maybe if there's enough community feedback in favor of a sandbox design they will consider that for the design for their next game.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Emptiness

[Nasdaq7]

I'm a programmer, it's like a few lines to open up those areas.

 

A few lines. Let the people enter there, if their characters are good, they will survive. My team was top. The best weapons. The best of everything. They were slaying those dragons at the bottom of the map at level 4, level 5. I knew precisely what the armors meant, the damage per second of the weapons, the frame rates.

Those expected errands were just not too much fun.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nasdaq7

[MReed]

I'm a programmer, it's like a few lines to open up those areas.

 

A few lines. Let the people enter there, if their characters are good, they will survive. My team was top. The best weapons. The best of everything.

 

But the quest content in those areas won't make any sense.  Specifically, it will assume that you know things / have done things that you haven't done at that point in the game.  Heck, this already happens with companions -- if you don't proceed directly to defiance bay after gaining your stronghold, your companions will make several comments that reference information that the PC (or the player, if this is the first time playing the game) doesn't know yet.

 

Everyone here understands that you would like a sandbox game, with mostly / partially procedurally generated "quests" that are fairly simple, straightforward, and standalone in nature, but this isn't what this game was designed to do.  This game is designed to revolve around handcrafted quests that are supported by complex dialog that are designed to be experienced in sequence.  If you don't like to play through quests (and, based on your posts to this point, it sounds like you don't), then...  Well, you will inevitably chafe at the limits this style of game imposes on you.

[Prime-Mover]

I'm a programmer, it's like a few lines to open up those areas.

 

A few lines. Let the people enter there, if their characters are good, they will survive. My team was top. The best weapons. The best of everything. They were slaying those dragons at the bottom of the map at level 4, level 5. I knew precisely what the armors meant, the damage per second of the weapons.

So you are also familiar with managing a finite amount of resources. If they open up those bottlenecks, which - let's imagine - were only to be opened after some significant event in the world had transpired, and which your companions are set to react to after a certain progression in the story. Then they would have to write all those story elements for the unlikely contingency that some player would try to get that far geographically speaking. They would need assets (art, sound and dialogue) for both prior and post these events. 

 

Of course, with enough resources, Obsidian could program for all possible contingencies. But it's much more cost efficient to simply and elegantly lock of certain areas. Fair enough if you don't like this type of game, but as a programmer, you must be able to understand some of the resources involved in something like what you are requesting.

[PIP-Clownboy]

The game is great. The game is OK. Keep up the good work...I enjoyed this game more than most other games. But I can see someone might quit at those bottlenecks. So man up! And discuss it - look at it.

 

Just remove those restrictions on the areas where users cannot go to because they have to complete some main quest.

 

Did you also quit BG2 because you couldn't to the Underdark fresh out of Irenicas' Dungeon? 

 

The main quest progression in POE is really not that difficult. You can easily rush to Act 3 like at lvl 6 and the map will be open. 

 

A completely open world Isometric game would be pretty cool, Darklands style. But this is a BG successor. .the same game that would not allow you to enter Baldur's Gate until you progressed. 

[Nasdaq7]

I wouldn't even worry about opening the game and not changing all the dialogue. Perhaps the game just needs to open. I like quests, but you never know: is this the main quest? So you cannot see from the interface information provided, precisely that you are busy with a main quest or is it a side quest? Personally I like the words: main quests and side quests. So that's another strong recommendation. People must know precisely from the journal that they are busy with a main quest or a side quest.

Personally I like playing the game, completing it as quickly as possible and then to play it again the second time, doing the side quests.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nasdaq7

[illathid]

I wouldn't even worry about opening the game and not changing all the dialogue. Perhaps the game just needs to open. I like quests, but you never know: is this the main quest? So you cannot see from the interface information provided, am I busy with a main quest or is it a side quest? So that's another strong recommendation. People must know precisely from the journal that they are busy with a main quest or a side quest.

Um... You can? Main quest is at the top in your quest journal, side quests in the middle, smaller tasks are at the bottom.

[PIP-Clownboy]

I wouldn't even worry about opening the game and not changing all the dialogue. Perhaps the game just needs to open. I like quests, but you never know: is this the main quest? So you cannot see from the interface information provided, am I busy with a main quest or is it a side quest? So that's another strong recommendation. People must know precisely from the journal that they are busy with a main quest or a side quest.

 

After reading the journal entries I had no real issues deciphering which was the main storyline since I actually read the dialogue. Do you also want yellow ! over quest givers as well?

[Aron Times]

I don't know if being firm and unwavering in your stance has worked for you well in real life, but it doesn't really work that well online. We can't see you, we can't hear you, and we don't know who or what you are, so your ideas and statements have to stand on their own merits if you want to convince people that you're right. What you're doing is pretty much the main tactic of certain kinds of online trolls, and that is to keep posting the same thing over and over again until someone agrees with you. Even then, there are people who you just can't persuade. Maybe their opinions and stances are radically different from yours, or maybe they're just trolls disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.

 

You don't seem to be a troll, just someone unused to how Internet discussions usually go.

[Nasdaq7]

In the interface, I see a territory with quests and then I see the words "quests and then tasks."

 

Which is it? Which is most important? 

[MReed]

I don't know if being firm and unwavering in your stance has worked for you well in real life, but it doesn't really work that well online. We can't see you, we can't hear you, and we don't know who or what you are, so your ideas and statements have to stand on their own merits if you want to convince people that you're right. What you're doing is pretty much the main tactic of certain kinds of online trolls, and that is to keep posting the same thing over and over again until someone agrees with you. Even then, there are people who you just can't persuade. Maybe their opinions and stances are radically different from yours, or maybe they're just trolls disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing.

 

You don't seem to be a troll, just someone unused to how Internet discussions usually go.

 

I would add that you are trying to defend something that simply doesn't need to be defended -- after all, you posted your personal opinion, and you shouldn't be shocked that people disagree with you.  Unless someone is attacking a position that you don't actually hold, then you should leave your original post to stand on its own.  Even in face-to-face conversations, it is very difficult to convince someone to abandon a preference, after all.

[Nasdaq7]

 Aron Times this is not a usual project. This is a kickstarter project. A major project that has many companies across the world interested. The ENTIRE world is taking note.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nasdaq7

[MReed]

In the interface, I see a territory with quests and then I see the words "quests and then tasks."

 

Which is it? Which is most important? 

 

The quests list is ordered as follows:

 

Critical Path Quests

Companion Quests

Everything else (e.g. side quests)

[Marceror]

The game is great. The game is OK. Keep up the good work...I enjoyed this game more than most other games. But I can see someone might quit at those bottlenecks. So man up! And discuss it - look at it.

 

Just remove those restrictions on the areas where users cannot go to because they have to complete some main quest.

The restrictions are important to the flow of the story, so removing them would be counter productive. So I wouldn't hold your breath on this being done as an official game change. If you're a programmer, you can probably figure out how to mod the game to allow this. But don't go crying to Obsidian if it results in game breaking bugs.

[Katarack21]

 

2. The most hindering part for me of the game, which made me quit, was you have to do this or that to open up the map. I love open world exploration. I hate talking to 10 people doing 20 things in a specific order before the map opens up to me.

 

What are you talking about? You can go pretty much anywhere you want. I can't think of a single place where an area wasn't available to me if I went there on foot.

 

 

The Eastern Path out of Cad Nua has to be opened by fighting Maerwald, and the path to Twin Elms opens after Act II.

 

[illathid]

In the interface, I see a territory with quests and then I see the words "quests and then tasks."

 

Which is it? Which is most important? 

 

I'll link a pic of my journal here. Careful for spoilers

 

 

 

 

Everything listed under "The Hollowing of the Dyrwood" is a critical path quest. Anything listed under "Quests" or "Tasks" is optional.

Edited April 8, 2015 by illathid

[Srex]

I'm incredulous that anyone could not have enough of the mundane crafting ingredients.  I had 40+ of everything except the rarest items by the end of the game, and that was just from picking every plant and looting every corpse I came across.  There are also multiple shops that sell them for cheap, including one in your own stronghold, AND two stronghold upgrades that generate free ingredients for you every day.

 

I was pretty sparing with my enchantments, though, and I didn't craft much until the end.  I also went down halfway through the mega dungeon immediately, and probably got a lot of ingredients there, so maybe that's why?

[k1rage]

what do you mean by quit... its a single player game its not like your paying a monthly subscription fee

 

therefore no one cares if you stop playing they already have your money lol

 

what is this the WoW forums suddenly lol

[Katarack21]

Some of the ingredients come in huge amounts, some are fairly rare. The biggest limit to me upgrading everything to Exceptional is a frigging plant.

[Nasdaq7]

I'm just giving my honest opinion. You like collecting flowers. I hate collecting flowers. Want to do a survey? Please run it on this website. Another recommendation.

[Nasdaq7]

This is about seeing how well the kickstarter community interacts with the developers and the rest of the consumers. And I am surprised to see the opposite, instead of discussion, there's censorship, fear. It's a new business model, people are examining what will happen. What are the shortcomings of the system... is it as expected or where's the gaps...

[Nasdaq7]

I'm certain it is not that difficult to change it. Just say when such and such is in that newly opened area, that the previous quest is complete. AND when such and such is in that old area where the quest is, the quest is not complete. Update the interface. I'm certain it's that easy.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nasdaq7