RPGCodex Review #1 - Hŵrpa Dwrp

[Sensuki]

So guys... Before the game was released there were alot of **** talking. The general consensus were however, that the common goal was to improve the game. It's sad to see now, that the discussion is reduced to this. Any worthwhile constructive argument about the future of PoE is quickly shot down.  

And it's sad to read Sensukis posts on the codex aswell. To watch him starting this thread, only to coward out, when Matt is confronting him. Then to go post a link on the codex about this thread, only to promote his wish to belong to their group of self important wankers and ridicule the how the peasents here doesn't agree with them. 

I actually believed he wanted to work for the betterment of PoE, but he showed his true colors now. 

So sad.

Excuse me, but I am right here thankyou very much. I replied to Matt's post and I've replied to several others. Matt is a friend of mine so naturally I'm not going to kick up a stink over him disagreeing with me on a forum .

 

This forum and many of the other forums on the game move at an incredibly fast pace and it's impossible to keep up with all of them. I mostly stick to the Codex Pillars of Eternity stuff now because I like reading the Codex.

 

I posted the Codex review here because no one else had yet. I have also posted other Codex content here before such as the Shadowrun Hong Kong stuff / Codex Top RPGs in GD and various other things. If the Vault Dwelller and Grunker review was posted first I would have posted that instead (which likely is going to be a positive review). I also informed others of that review upcoming.

 

Other than post about my disappointment with the game (usually when asked directly), yes I have stopped contributing and producing video content because ... I don't like the game and I believe that I can do nothing further to make the game enjoyable for me to play. My issues with the game are at the design level, not the implementation level. They cannot be fixed. There is a group of people that enjoy the game - largely the game's 'target audience' - badgame and Something Awful.

 

You don't see me going on a rampage about it. I post on the Codex, which I consider my home forum and I have posted a few times on reddit, here and Something Awful, almost always when someone asks me a question or to respond to a personal query.

 

You may be disappointed that I have stopped contributing but I was bitterly disappointed with the game after the amount of money and effort I spent on it only to not really enjoy playing it, not even enough to want to finish it. The best thing for me to do is just simply stay the hell away.

 

And just because I posted a meme about "just wanting to read the comments", does that make me a troll? The review post has generated nearly 30 pages of discussion and debate. Discussion and debate in my opinion is healthy. Do you see me rebutting every person who disagrees with me or the review? No. Only specific posts, like the guy who said BG1 is a terrible game.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Nonek]

A shame to lose you Mr Sensuki, and your effortless ability to manipulate various folks into a frothing rage by delivering your opinion, thanks for all of the hard work and bugfixing you volunteered for, it is appreciated.

[archangel979]

Remember when people just had fun playing games? And didn't analyze them to death looking for faults? Good times x)

Well games were better at that time than what we get now. People would not analyze PoE so much if it was as good as BG.

[Sensuki]

I'll be doing testing for Torment in a similar manner I think. Will probably see some of you around for that.

 

Remember when people just had fun playing games?

What if you're not having fun and are trying to figure out why?

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[archangel979]

Did anybody explain why the decision to prevent running from combat was included? Still feels like a heavy-handed way to force players to deal with a situation, and goes against the spirit of table-top/BG imo.

Probably has to do with developer time needed to implement it. Like most of the missing "basic" features that IE games had.

[View619]

 

Remember when people just had fun playing games? And didn't analyze them to death looking for faults? Good times x)

Well games were better at that time than what we get now. People would not analyze PoE so much if it was as good as BG.

 

 

To be fair, I'm sure people analyzed BG as well. It's only naturally to analyze that which you enjoy, right? Or want to enjoy in some cases.

[gogocactus]

I'll be doing testing for Torment in a similar manner I think. Will probably see some of you around for that.

 

 

Remember when people just had fun playing games?

What if you're not having fun and are trying to figure out why?

It is almost a pity that PoE got released as now we won't be able to enjoy your contributions to the game and it's forum anymore. I will be looking forward to see more from you on the torment forums.

[Amentep]

 

 

Remember when people just had fun playing games? And didn't analyze them to death looking for faults? Good times x)

Well games were better at that time than what we get now. People would not analyze PoE so much if it was as good as BG.

 

 

To be fair, I'm sure people analyzed BG as well. It's only naturally to analyze that which you enjoy, right? Or want to enjoy in some cases.

 

 

Yeah, you couldn't read through three threads without Karzak complaining about dual wielding being misimplemented in BG/BG2.

 

But you did have 6'8" Italian Warlord revealing how to find the Terrasque in the Oasis in Bg2, so there was that, at least...

[Sensuki]

It is almost a pity that PoE got released as now we won't be able to enjoy your contributions to the game and it's forum anymore. I will be looking forward to see more from you on the torment forums.

Torment will be interesting as it will be mostly a narrative focused game. They just hired a Codexian Adventure game developer as a contract writer, so hopefully there's puzzle gameplay in there too.

 

I'll probably focus mostly on polish, UI, performance and maybe with the encounter design.

 

Adam Heine is the Lead Designer and he seems pretty cool. He talked recently on the Codex about using some UI features similar to the Banner Saga, which I like because the Banner Saga has good tactical combat and has a good UI.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Gromnir]

 

you are being silly.  the ie games used d&d mechanics.

So what. PoE uses D&D mechanics. Stop changing the subject.

 

No, Luckmann is right. People asking for More IE Game feel are asking for just that: More IE game feel. D&D was only brought up because YOU brought it up.

 

you are as much a yutz as luckman.  again, not only is the ie games use o' hard counters and insta-kills direct attributable to D&D, but focus on the d& d aspect as if that is important is... stoopid.

 

hypothetical, so am gonna use "if" more than once. IF we were seeing folks complain o' poe deflection + dr hybrid and IF numerous people were using the ie games thac0 as an example o' how combat mechanics should be done, then it would be perfect appropriate to identify thac0 from bg2 or iwd as an ie mechanic but as a d&d mechanic as well.  yes, thac0 were utilized in the ie games, and heck, there were even some few instances wherein ie game thac0 were slight different than d&d thac0, but it would be idiotic to ignore to pretend that thac0 were not in the ie games Because it were integral to d&d mechanics.  the examples o' insta kills and hard counters from ie games is no different.  those examples given is direct resultant o' the d&d nature o' the ie games.

 

also, and this is more important, which is why we are absolute certain you and luckman is hopeless to understand, but it don't freaking matter.  the d&d nature o' the ie hard counters and insta-kill were never a significant factor.  is ie insta-kills good or bad for no reason other than their d&d legacy? 'course not.  is the fact that hard counters from the ie games got their origin in d&d pnp rules books important to any reasonable or rational person?  we hope not.  D&D were never important.  label the hard counters as d&d does not transform good to bad, or bad to good.  the strengths and weakness o' insta-kills and hard counters is NOT dependent on d&d.... but that should be obvious.  unless d&d killed luckman's puppy when he were 5, we can't think o' a plausible reason why he would be so affected by the mention o' d&d.  yeah, ie game hard counters and insta-kills is a d&d legacy, but why on earth is that significant to lucky?

 

we were simple letting luckman hang himself til he recognized the irony o' using a logic fallacy to complain 'bout our use o' D&D language.  call strawman is particular funny.

 

however, am happy to see you gleeful leap onto the gallows next to lucky.  is proof-positive to us that all is right with the world.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited April 24, 2015 by Gromnir

[scrotiemcb]

Regarding confuse/charm grazes:

If you ask me, the problem is not that the status effect on these abilities is constant, but that the accuracy bonus is consistent across every spell/power. Giving a power 30 less Accuracy and double the damage/duration would make it far more of a hit-or-miss (technically, graze-or-miss); conversely, adding 30 Accuracy and halving damage/duration gives a very consistent ability, the equivalent of a "no save," but defense would still help you a little bit. It also changes min-max goals, as hit-to-crit conversion is useless for the former and handy for the latter.

 

But Obsidian didn't do anything like this. The shear raw amount of sameness and mechanical non-diversity is staggering. Hell, a bunch of Priest buffs are essentially unabashed clones of each other.

Edited April 24, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Sensuki]

A bit more insight into my point of view:

 

I think that the root of most of the problems with the gameplay lie in the system design - pretty much every gameplay problem can be related to the specific design of a system or how specific systems interact with one another (and I mean the design, not the implementation).

 

Encounters wouldn't feel as bland/repetitive if the system design was better or different, it's not the area designers' fault that two different encounters can be beaten with exactly the same strategy where you just follow the same routine every time and aren't required to adjust based on what the enemies do. Most of that is to do with system and creature design.

 

However, encounter design IS very copy-paste and there is a lack of unique/named enemies that are 'special' in some way. Seems like everyone either forgot the good things about the IE encounters or they weren't allowed to do it? Dunno.

 

The amount of fetch quests probably lies in being restricted by their regimented production process - they labelled quests with certain complexities and then I believe producers / leads could downgrade / upgrade quests based on the needs of production - so what you have is a lot of not really that complex quests all designed in a fairly regimented manner. Not really much quest intermingling. Not really many steps. Pretty cookie cutter formatting, always with choice and maybe a bit of reactivity to the player but not necessarily consequence or reactions to the quest result from the game world.

 

Then again, maybe they didn't like / don't remember The Cult of the Unseeing Eye or Mae'Var's Guildhall and have never played The Witcher games all the way through (which have some really good investigative quest design).

 

Raedric's Hold is one area that was just added in for the hell of it, and seems to have been designed much more naturally than any of the other areas in the game. Wasn't even a planned area AFAIK. Give people a bit more freedom yo, and look at the difference.

 

I would arguably say that this is an 'overproduced' game.

 

Then there's the narrative, which I think is a mess. The collaborative design process for the story doesn't seem to have done them any favors as opposed to the single person approach, and it seems to suffer from perhaps too many cooks, and perhaps trying to incorporate too many themes, too many layers and too many ideas. Other than the structural issues, not fully realized topics/themes and poorly handled bits (all of Act 2), I just found the antagonist, the Dyrwood (nothing about it is really likeable as a nation in the game, lore is fine though) and most of the support cast completely unintersting, and I couldn't give a rats arse about all the stuff thrown at me in Act 3. Couldn't have gone in a more uninteresting direction unfortunately.

 

I'm pretty sure that for some reason I want to turn off some soul machines to stop the Hollowborn problem (the most interesting part of the story, which unfortunately was a B-plotline at best), and I really don't care that maybe I can't be assured of anything ... and I'm pretty sure that that quote has nothing to do with the game lol.

 

Lots of people on the team did a good job - Art team in particular (other than some technical issues), but system design and narrative - the game rides on the shoulders of these things, and this is where it falls down IMO.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Beta testers test whether something is working - they don't redesign games.  And there is a reason for that.

 

Incorrect. Beta testers test games and give feedback including suggestions. And that's what happened in the beta forum. Feedback including suggestions were given. The dev's responded with implementing some of those suggestions. And there was more than one person giving feedback, and Sensuki was at the forefront with a lot of feedback. Also, there were backers who asked Sensuki whether he would test certain things and at times he would create threads.

 

For myself, I like to exploit, find patterns, break, clock or get kill screens in games. This goes back to the Atari 2600 days with finding patterns and kill screens which there were at the time. I like to show the ridiculousness of things, stuff that doesn't make sense and design flaws as I've done with PoE. But I really don't have the time to go into in depth reasons why certain enemies do what they do. They just do. Just like I can tank and spank a lot of the shades and shadows and fampyrs and they will never go to my nude ranged characters. So I might show a screen shot as I've done many times in the beta forums or a short video of different things.

 

I gave feedback at the ridiculousness of exploration xp with skipping down a town street, walking in and out of houses getting xp. And even more ridiculous with going up and down stairs in houses. I go up and down the stairs and get xp. Whee!

 

As a beta tester, I'll also give feedback including suggestions, flaws and whatever else I feel at the time. It's up to the dev's to sort out what they deem important and what isn't. If the dev's feel that Cyan circles aren't important for neutral NPC's, then I will back up anyone including Sensuki to have that changed. I believe the dev's are simply wrong on this decision. And I'll call out all the degenerative gameplay that's been introduced in PoE that never existed in the IE games.

 

So am I now trying to redesign the game by having cyan circles around neutral NPCs? Well tough **** for anyone who doesn't like it. You can call it redesigning the game and make out it's some derogatory term if you like, I'll still call it feedback.

 

 

The old games had a series of features - some deliberate, some from old habit, some from technical limitations. A lot of players get fixated on all of them as being necessary,  Good designers separate out the core ingredients for fun.  For instance, I've gotten really tired of spending all of my game time shuffling junk from A to B.  Thank God for the stash in this game, the lack of arrows, the crafting things that accumulate passively in the background. I spend my gaming time enjoying myself, not organizing and weeding through junk.  And this sort of thing is the sort of thing that traditionalists absolutely despise as "dumbing down" - even though, of course, I could keep unlimited piles of junk around in games like BG if I was willing to waste enough of my time to do it, with no in-game consequences at all.

 

And the basic proof that the developers were right is that this game is, by any rational measure, an enormous success.  It got incredibly positive professional reviews, for a genre that doesn't usually appeal to people who have favored relatively easy and shallow action games.  It got incredibly positive user reviews.  (Games where the users rebel have huge gaps in pro and user reviews, e.g. Dragon Age 2.) 

 

And then you have a subset here who lost design arguments with the designer - completely unsurprising - and who now hate the game and trash it all they can.  I've seen this movie before, and I'm not somehow being hurt.  I honestly think that the angry crowd would simply be better served by stepping back - for their sake, not mine.

 

Ah yes. The lack of arrows. The lack of choice between a detonation arrow, a fire arrow, a poison arrow and the various other arrows. I don't see the problem with having all those types of arrows in the IE games. I thought it was great that my character with a bow could shoot fireballs and then instantly change to poison arrows and then change to biting arrows because I had three different types of arrows in the quiver slots. Interesting that you would forego all that and go with the infinite ammo in PoE that never runs out. And in PoE, if your bow does fire damage but you want to do cold damage but still want to be able to keep fire for other enemies, you have to swap with another bow. Yep, you have to keep an assortment of weapons for different types of damage. But that's okay, because at least we don't have the different types of arrows from the IE games. All that's done is swap different arrows with different bows.

 

Positive reviews doesn't mean that the game doesn't have any faults, the dev's were right and the beta testers were wrong with trying to have things changed. There's still a lot of good suggestions, especially with cosmetic changes that could make the game better. But that's okay, they're just an angry crowd and we can ignore them. Lets ignore the feedback to make the game better because the dev's were right and won the design argument. The reviews proved it.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[scrotiemcb]

I really don't think the game needs cosmetic changes. It is pretty enough. Gameplay is the main issue. I think some of the quests could be fleshed out a bit better but that pales in importance to mechanics and encounter design.

Edited April 24, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Valmy]

Good post Sensuki. I really enjoyed the game but, as usual, I find your critiques convincing and well thought out.

 

Thanks again for the hard work you did on beta testing this game.

[Monte Carlo]

Like scrotiemcb says, the game *looks* great - I love the avatars and how they get progressively more elaborate. No problems there.

[eRe4s3r]

Re: Sensuki

 

The lack of proper class design and mechanic design is imo not a sign of over production I think the real issue was and will always be that at the beginning of this KS Obsidian had nothing, ZERO world, ZERO plan, ZERO design documents. By time beta feedback like yours came to bear was already the time most of the systems were solidified via internal work by Obsidian but because everything was rushed I would assume the "mechanics" and "plot" work was never properly reviewed before it was put into production. This could never result in an IE game worth the name because the people involved were not the people that designed the mechanics in BG1/BG2/IWD1/IWD2 etc. That itself is not even a problem, but when you have people in charge that work directly against certain elements of IE style combat and mechanics then it can not ever end in an IE style game.... PoE for example has no true puzzle area. The first dungeon has that grid trap thing and already there you can see the differences in mechanical design between IE games and PoE, IE games would not allow you to detect nor disarm that. Because it is supposed to be a riddle that you should not solve with brute force but by noticing things in the area. This is just 1 thing, but it is the first thing I noticed when playing PoE. There is a certain lack of "balls" when it comes to the design of various systems in PoE. Overproduced? No.. to me this is simply dumbed down.

 

And the result of what happens when you have to catch up on all this while working on an actual game with collaborative writing... well that result is PoEt. It's also very clear Avellone had very little total influence on the main plot. Which I think hurt the plot much more than anything else ever could. Normally main plot and companion story should be interwoven, but here it is nearly as if companions and plot were 2 different things that only marginally intermingled probably because someone noticed "Hey, we have no dialog about the plot for the companions" and this makes the companions so weird and fixed, so static.

 

Either way, I did not participate in the beta so as to not spoil the game for me. But I think if your stance and opinions had spread further and earlier into the dev process we could have a proper IE game with PoEt. But as you had to fight against established systems already during beta, there was no way you could drastically alter the already planned out course of development.

Edited April 24, 2015 by eRe4s3r

[Sensuki]

The lack of proper class design and mechanic design is imo not a sign of over production

I was talking about the effect of very strict production on area design. I think that they could maybe loosen it a bit more and get much more fruitful results, but also I believe Act 1 was developed right at the end of the project, so you'll probably see better content simply based on designers being more familiar with the tools and being able to implement content quicker - thus possibly more complex areas and quests in the future. They will also hopefully take a lot of the criticism on board.

 

Unfortunately though that comes second to the actual moment to moment gameplay for me which is my main issue with the game. I'm not going to hold my breath but I don't believe the 'style' of combat this game has will ever change. It's always going to be mostly positioning and strategy, followed by a rote script. That is simply what the system design promotes.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Ouroboros226]

I'll be doing testing for Torment in a similar manner I think. Will probably see some of you around for that.

 

Remember when people just had fun playing games?

What if you're not having fun and are trying to figure out why?

 

 

Did you have fun on your first playthrough Sensuki? 

 

I'm asking because on the DA:I forum - some guy complained (created a huge wall of text) that the game sucked, but admitted to having played 200+ hours. You don't play a game for 200 hours and say it sucks

 

I just took you for a theorycrafter, I may be wrong but did it go like this?

 

1: Played through the game, had fun.

2: Theorycrafted your brains out on mechanics

3: Play the game again with knowledge of all exploits and mechanics possible

4: Find it easy, boring and bad due to having exhausted the challenge, surprise and unpredictability of the game.

5: Seeking out flaws and errors on purpose 

 

Not saying I'm right here! I'm just curious if what has happened in your case - could be having actually played yourself to boredom or the like.

[Gromnir]

is a lotta very general criticisms, which is ok as is sensuki's opinions.  your opinions don't actual require justifications.  claim that cult o' the eyeless or bg2 thieves guild quests is superior investigative design to poe final act or blood legacy is opinions.  no doubt you will justify your opinions, at least to your self, but am sure you will recognize that the bg2 eyeless and thieves guild quests were having numerous flaws, so folks who wanna illustrate bg2 quest design shortcomings will have plenty o' fodder.  we will concede that the scope o' bg2 were bigger and if such scope were vital, then we understand some disappointment with poe.  even so, we personal weren't expecting bg2 scope from poe.  the obsidian dev-speak regarding the number and size o' maps notwithstanding, we never thought it were possible for poe to have the kinda scale as did bg2.  coulda' had a few more larger non critical path quests, but doing so can actual make a game feel even smaller as the amount o' optional quests is functional reduced.  development is ultimately a zero sum game after all.  make some quests bigger and more involved either necessitates removal o' other quests or the reduction in size o' remaining quests.

 

oh, and narrative mess were kinda an endemic problem for the bg series.  our complaints regarding the bg narrative is ferocious.  bg2 were less o' a problem for us, but am also recalling when bg2 were first released just how much nerd rage we encountered from the core Co6 followers o' bg2.  it may be hard to believe, but the folks who followed bg2 development will be able to chime in and share regarding the initial complaints o' the dedicated boardies  regarding story aspects o' bg2. shortly after release, the ardent followers o' that game were the ones most likely to be dismissive o' bg2 story as nothing more than the traditional wizard-gone-mad-with-power schtick.  is perhaps amusing to us, given our perspective, to see same old cycle repeat itself.  far too often we see folks who got... issues with a game, use narrative as a bit o' a smokescreen.  perhaps sensuki is different, but it not seem that way at the moment.  "uninteresting" is a valid complaint, but it is not subject to meaningful response, is it?  

 

sensuki's opinions o' narrative and encounter/quest design is no less valid than the mob, but his opinion not seem any more valid or well-defined than vol's.

 

as for mechanics issues...  we heard sensuki's complaints during the beta.  is no need to reexamine as we did not anticipate that he would have some kinda sea change experience playing the full game as opposed to the beta.  many o' sensuki's mechanics concerns is at least well-considered. cain and sawyer and the other developers apparent disagreed with sensuki, but that not make sensuki wrong.  regardless, anybody who listened to sensuki feedback regarding mechanics leading up to the release has no reason to be surprised at his current perspective.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Monte Carlo]

I'll let Sensuki speak for himself but he's not a theorycrafter.

[Sensuki]

Did you have fun on your first playthrough Sensuki?

I didn't finish the game man, I said that. I stopped playing in Act 3.

 

I beta tested for over 250 hours but that was mostly bug hunting, recording videos and such (which I actually find rather fun). My views on issues in the beta were batted away by Josh Sawyer many times with things like "you're testing a limited beta with underwhelming content, underleveled characters" etc

 

Beta gameplay was actually more fun than the full game lol.

 

The most fun I had in the full game was when I only had three characters and was underleveled with no gear. Once you get a full party and hit level 4, the game just becomes boring to play.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Monte Carlo]

I don't think taking criticism from Peons like us is one of Sawyer's strong points.

[Sensuki]

is a lotta very general criticisms, which is ok as is sensuki's opinions. your opinions don't actual require justifications. claim that cult o' the eyeless or bg2 thieves guild quests is superior investigative design to poe final act or blood legacy is opinions.

Blood Legacy quest has less steps than both The Cult of the Unseeing Eye and Mae'Var's Guildhall and the investigation part is completely optional, and mostly for flavor. It is also accompanied by the worst dungeon in the game (thankfully you can almost completely bypass it though) and the dialogue with Wymund also has several issues.

 

Both Unseeing Eye and Mae'Vars had multiple steps and good accompanying content. To complete Blood Legacy, all you need to do is go to the Tanner's shop, take his key, go into the dungeon and go into Wymund's room and resolve it there.

 

Obsidian do improve some aspects of quest design. There's usually a fair bit of choice and often multiple resolutions. They often have 'more' of that than the BG games, although not always 'better'. Personally I care more about actual content associated with the quest than that stuff.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Gromnir]

I don't think taking criticism from Peons like us is one of Sawyer's strong points.

he not need our pov, but we will observe that insofar as boardie feedback/interplay, josh has matured considerably over the years.  in the past it were extreme easy to goad josh into emotional responses.  those outbursts were illuminating.  when josh got steamed, he were no longer speaking as a black isle employee, but rather as josh sawyer.  we kinda miss those days.  one too may iwd2 ranger moments has given josh experience and maturity to weather the worst the boards have to offer.  regardless, josh handles criticism with far more maturity and reserve than he did in the past, but am kinda missing the past. 

 

HA! Good Fun!