White March Part 2 officially announced, coming January

[Tigranes]

It's certainly legitimate that some gamers may struggle with, or not enjoy, the combat, and it's perfectly reasonable that they want to enjoy the rest of the game. That's why we have things like god modes and cheats. Just like people are free to just skip past all the dialogue and get into fights, without demanding a 'Battle Time' mode. There's no need to start investing development resources to creating "Let us gut out half of the game for you" buttons. 

 

"It's optional" isn't a magic phrase you can use everywhere. How about an optional Sex Time mode where you can have sex with every character? It's just like how we release Disney movies and then there's an optional R18 version where all the characters bone each other - no, wait, we don't have that, even though it's 'optional', do we?

 

When you start having optional modes like this it's an invitation for people to never learn how to play the game, and then when such players start accounting for a portion of the sales and start demanding more things (maybe they do want to experience combat but they want it to be super easy?), or when they start putting up user reviews and spreading word of mouth about the game through a totally different experience, you get a gradual creep of a very different design. 

 

You can't make a game for everybody. Not even the biggest budget AAA games. Just like you can't write a book that is for everyone (skip to page 20 if you are in it for the sex, page 40 if you want the science fiction...). What you do is make a product, and then stand behind it as a whole.

[Gfted1]

Due to my terribad PoE combat skills, every time I tried to play the Beta combat would devolve into "dogpile in the middle of the screen". If "story mode" somehow assists me in preventing that then color me interested.

[Zenbane]

It's certainly legitimate that some gamers may struggle with, or not enjoy, the combat, and it's perfectly reasonable that they want to enjoy the rest of the game. That's why we have things like god modes and cheats. Just like people are free to just skip past all the dialogue and get into fights, without demanding a 'Battle Time' mode. There's no need to start investing development resources to creating "Let us gut out half of the game for you" buttons. 

 

"It's optional" isn't a magic phrase you can use everywhere. How about an optional Sex Time mode where you can have sex with every character? It's just like how we release Disney movies and then there's an optional R18 version where all the characters bone each other - no, wait, we don't have that, even though it's 'optional', do we?

 

When you start having optional modes like this it's an invitation for people to never learn how to play the game, and then when such players start accounting for a portion of the sales and start demanding more things (maybe they do want to experience combat but they want it to be super easy?), or when they start putting up user reviews and spreading word of mouth about the game through a totally different experience, you get a gradual creep of a very different design. 

 

You can't make a game for everybody. Not even the biggest budget AAA games. Just like you can't write a book that is for everyone (skip to page 20 if you are in it for the sex, page 40 if you want the science fiction...). What you do is make a product, and then stand behind it as a whole.

 

Comparing Story Time mode in an RPG to sex scenes in a Disney Movie makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Even comparing Story Time mode in an RPG to sex scenes in an RPG makes zero sense. Adding sex scenes to either of those two products would create a new subject matter rating (eg, no more Rated "G" for Disney), which targets an entirely new audience with an entirely new tone and genre.

 

The phrase "optional" isn't being used everywhere, it's being used in a very specific context that I'm guessing you can't see due to your overwhelming desire to visualize sex in everything lol

[Mazisky]

This was a product created (and crowfunded) for experienced rpg gamers.

 

I'm fine with difficulty options (and no problem about story mode) but the fact the entire game difficulty balance is around "easy" is a bit contraditory considering what i wrote above.

 

I didn't play after patch tho, maybe something changed

Edited November 16, 2015 by Mazisky

[Infinitron]

Three words that'll make Tigranes mad:

 

Beamdog. Feature. Parity.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Infinitron

[Sensuki]

If the aim is the most sales as possible, not a bad direction to go in.

Totally unsurprising direction too. Foreshadowing Pillars 2 - story mode and half speed combat default! 

Edited November 16, 2015 by Sensuki

[Mazisky]

If the aim is the most sales as possible, not a bad direction to go in.

 

If the aim is the most sales as possible, it was a better idea to make a different game, with less text and better graphic,  i don't get it

Edited November 16, 2015 by Mazisky

[Fenixp]

It's certainly legitimate that some gamers may struggle with, or not enjoy, the combat, and it's perfectly reasonable that they want to enjoy the rest of the game. That's why we have things like god modes and cheats. Just like people are free to just skip past all the dialogue and get into fights, without demanding a 'Battle Time' mode. There's no need to start investing development resources to creating "Let us gut out half of the game for you" buttons. 

 

"It's optional" isn't a magic phrase you can use everywhere. How about an optional Sex Time mode where you can have sex with every character? It's just like how we release Disney movies and then there's an optional R18 version where all the characters bone each other - no, wait, we don't have that, even though it's 'optional', do we?

First of all, I can't imagine that changing the game in such a way that combat is considerably easier is a particularly difficult task, whereas changing the game in such a way that you can skip all dialogue would be a lot more daunting task.

 

Second, if Obsidian wanted to implement an optional Combat Time mode and optional Sexy Time mode, I mean it's their game and they would give us, the players, more stuff to do with the game. Why the hell not.

 

Now, the only argument which would sort of make sense to me is that attracting wider audience could shift focus of the game for the future, but it's a bit of a slippery slope argument. At the end of the day, it's Obsidian who calls the shots and they're experienced enough to distinguish between arguments of people who quite simply dislike what they do and arguments of people who actually provide constructive criticism which will lead to improvement of the game. Besides, they damn well realize who is it that made the game possible and what kind of niché they filled on the market. They can't possibly compete with big AAA titles for popularity, so they'll have to stick to that niché whether they like it or not. And given Obsidian's positive reaction to PoE's sales and reception, I'm pretty sure they'll like sticking to that niché.

 

If the aim is the most sales as possible, it was a better idea to make a different game, with less text and better graphic,  i don't get it

Nope, Obsidian can't compete with AAA, so making the game as pretty as possible is not the way to go (altho it is quite pretty.) The path they decided to take was to make a game which appeals to a certain niché. Problem is that market for classic RPGs consists of more than only people who enjoy real time with pause combat, while most people liking classic RPGs seem to enjoy a good story. By making the combat semi-skippable they open the game to people who like classic RPGs with good story but do not enjoy the game's combat. Edited November 16, 2015 by Fenixp

[Sensuki]

If the aim is the most sales as possible, it was a better idea to make a different game, with less text and better graphic,  i don't get it

 

They couldn't because they needed to ride the nostalgia dollars for the Kickstarter. Now they don't.

[Mazisky]

 

If the aim is the most sales as possible, it was a better idea to make a different game, with less text and better graphic,  i don't get it

 

They couldn't because they needed to ride the nostalgia dollars for the Kickstarter. Now they don't.

 

 

I don't think so. If they wanted they could 've gone with a random fps and get more dollars so i think there is a true passion about rpgs behind the making of

[Tigranes]

Comparing Story Time mode in an RPG to sex scenes in a Disney Movie makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Even comparing Story Time mode in an RPG to sex scenes in an RPG makes zero sense. Adding sex scenes to either of those two products would create a new subject matter rating (eg, no more Rated "G" for Disney), which targets an entirely new audience with an entirely new tone and genre.

 

The phrase "optional" isn't being used everywhere, it's being used in a very specific context that I'm guessing you can't see due to your overwhelming desire to visualize sex in everything lol

 

 

People who don't want to play any combat in an RPG like POE (or, indeed, Icewind Dale) are a very, very different audience, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. 

 

I certainly would like to visualise sex in everything, but this damn industry won't give me my Sex Time! Maybe I should make a lot of threads about it like luzarius?

 

First of all, I can't imagine that changing the game in such a way that combat is considerably easier is a particularly difficult task, whereas changing the game in such a way that you can skip all dialogue would be a lot more daunting task.

Second, if Obsidian wanted to implement an optional Combat Time mode and optional Sexy Time mode, I mean it's their game and they would give us, the players, more stuff to do with the game. Why the hell not.

 

Now, the only argument which would sort of make sense to me is that attracting wider audience could shift focus of the game for the future, but it's a bit of a slippery slope argument. At the end of the day, it's Obsidian who calls the shots and they're experienced enough to distinguish between arguments of people who quite simply dislike what they do and arguments of people who actually provide constructive criticism which will lead to improvement of the game. Besides, they damn well realize who is it that made the game possible and what kind of niché they filled on the market. They can't possibly compete with big AAA titles for popularity, so they'll have to stick to that niché whether they like it or not. And given Obsidian's positive reaction to PoE's sales and reception, I'm pretty sure they'll like sticking to that niché.

 

 

1) Actually, a lot of games already do this, implicitly - because you can just smash '1' on every tree-structure dialogue in a lot of games and come out just fine. There are games that purposefully mix it up so that '1' isn't the "OK now let me go and help you" answer, but we've already seen the consequences of people complaining there is too much text: you think this game offers you some nice writing, but then you realise all the writing was pigeonholed in a way that you can spam '1'. Or X. 

 

2) OK. I guess they can do literally anything and everything, cos it's their game. Eder could wear a hat made of bacon and the Grieving Mother could become a neo-nazi. Your logic says it's all fine. 

 

3) So now you're saying "Slippery slope arguments are invalid because at the end of the day Obsidian makes the decisions." Which is like saying "no matter what happens, Obsidian knows best and they will never be influenced by anything, unless they wanted to be influenced." I guess, again, by that logic, anything and everything they do is fine by definition. 

[Infinitron]

Gee, you guys really want to argue about this, huh?

 

Well, consider the possibility that the new damage and affliction immunities may have made the regular Easy mode no longer as easy as originally intended.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Infinitron

[Sensuki]

I don't think so. If they wanted they could 've gone with a random fps and get more dollars so i think there is a true passion about rpgs behind the making of

Sure, just not RTWP combat.

[Fenixp]

People who don't want to play any combat in an RPG like POE (or, indeed, Icewind Dale) are a very, very different audience, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Except target audience of Pillars of Eternity is audience of Infinity Engine games. And the issue with that is that Infinity Engine games ranged from strongly combat-focused to strongly story-focused. By allowing us to make combat easier, Obsidian is not inviting audience which has not been on their radar previously anyway. I do have a few friends who enjoy Planescape Torment a lot more than any other IE game, and it's certainly not for its combat. They'll welcome the change, and are most definitely part of the original target audience.

 

1) Actually, a lot of games already do this, implicitly - because you can just smash '1' on every tree-structure dialogue in a lot of games and come out just fine. There are games that purposefully mix it up so that '1' isn't the "OK now let me go and help you" answer, but we've already seen the consequences of people complaining there is too much text: you think this game offers you some nice writing, but then you realise all the writing was pigeonholed in a way that you can spam '1'. Or X.

Cool, so we already had a mode to skip story. Now we also have one to skip combat. Win-win.

 

2) OK. I guess they can do literally anything and everything, cos it's their game. Eder could wear a hat made of bacon and the Grieving Mother could become a neo-nazi. Your logic says it's all fine.

So, where is it that you complain about the option of making heads of all characters into huge balloons?

 

3) So now you're saying "Slippery slope arguments are invalid because at the end of the day Obsidian makes the decisions." Which is like saying "no matter what happens, Obsidian knows best and they will never be influenced by anything, unless they wanted to be influenced." I guess, again, by that logic, anything and everything they do is fine by definition.

Not everything and anything they'd do would be fine - forcing features which hugely change the game on players owning Steam version of the game would naturally not be fine. That's not what they do tho (well it sort of is at times, see immunities, I don't really care tho since I have the original installer and patches backed up from GOG), and what they did manage to do is to create an optional game mode. There's nothing they can do right now to take the game I enjoy away from me, and that's all I want.

 

If they screw up the second game, it can be due to many factors, possibly including them reacting to influence they should not react to. But do you honestly believe that inviting more players to play their game is the difference between them screwing up the sequel or not? That this influence would not exist if they didn't include an easy mode?

[Mazisky]

Gee, you guys really want to argue about this, huh?

 

Well, consider the possibility that the new damage and affliction immunities may have made the regular Easy mode no longer as easy as originally intended.

 

Someone can confirm this? i didn't play after the 2.0 patch, it would be very nice if this is true

Edited November 16, 2015 by Mazisky

[Zenbane]

 

1) Actually, a lot of games already do this, implicitly - because you can just smash '1' on every tree-structure dialogue in a lot of games and come out just fine. There are games that purposefully mix it up so that '1' isn't the "OK now let me go and help you" answer, but we've already seen the consequences of people complaining there is too much text: you think this game offers you some nice writing, but then you realise all the writing was pigeonholed in a way that you can spam '1'. Or X. 

 

2) OK. I guess they can do literally anything and everything, cos it's their game. Eder could wear a hat made of bacon and the Grieving Mother could become a neo-nazi. Your logic says it's all fine. 

 

3) So now you're saying "Slippery slope arguments are invalid because at the end of the day Obsidian makes the decisions." Which is like saying "no matter what happens, Obsidian knows best and they will never be influenced by anything, unless they wanted to be influenced." I guess, again, by that logic, anything and everything they do is fine by definition.

 

1) If someone button mashes "1" then they will not get the most out of PoE and miss opportunities to engage in fun battles, as well as unique choices: setting someone free vs capture a prisoner. You are typing up generalities in order to make it seem like you have a firm grasp on this issue, but really it's just theorycrafting while ignoring the realities of the PoE experience.

 

2) There's a baseline level of common sense, judgement, knowledge, and experience that we can all observe; again you resort to generalizing in order to feign a retort.

 

3) Slippery Slope arguments are invalid because they are slippery slope arguments. They are literally defined as logical fallacies.

 

 

 

People who don't want to play any combat in an RPG like POE (or, indeed, Icewind Dale) are a very, very different audience, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying.

The target audience gained from adding Sex to a Disney movie is on one end of a spectrum, the target audience gained from adding Story Mode to a video game is on another extreme end. The result of adding Sex to a Disney movie can significantly harm Disney, the result of adding Story Mode to a video game harms absolutely no one (other than maybe the people reading forums lol)

 

Your analogy really does miss the mark in a fairly painful way.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Zenbane

[Infinitron]

Hey, wait a minute. What if Story Time doesn't reduce difficulty at all but rather is a difficulty-orthogonal setting that simply reduces the number of encounters in the game outright?

Edited November 16, 2015 by Infinitron

[Gromnir]

Story mode?  Colour me worried.  Does sound very Biowarian, almost expect a 'press button to skip battles' option.

that sounds  like a good option to Gromnir, though is likely we would never use it.  have a way so that a player could skip all trash battles?  why should inclusion o' such bother Gromnir.  

 

am recalling a longtime contributor to these boards who Gromnir frequent disagreed with on mechanics issues.  we never could understand what Di found appealing 'bout rolling o' character stats, but one reason she gave for such were that she were not a fan o' the combat in all the ie games.  she were also a biggie fan o' jagged alliance, so it ain't as if she hated game combat in general, but she played the ie games for the stories.  so, she would roll an uber character and then reduce combat difficulty.... and then she would like the ie games very much. 

 

why on earth would an option that makes game more widely accessible annoy Gromnir? 

 

oh, and am anticipating late january as we still ain't played part 1 of the xpac... and have been avoiding boards for most part so we can give a full play o' the xpac an untainted and untarnished play.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[gogocactus]

I think we should stop talking about how difficult the game "objectively" is. It is annoying and might sound insulting to some.

Each person has their own way of playing games. Just because you felt it was easy it doesen't mean it was. It was easy just to you. Others might find it difficult. I, myself, found it just about fine on normal. Thats why there are options and difficulty levels. More options is always good for any game.

If the majority of the playerbase finds the 'normal' difficulty of normal difficulty, and 'easy' difficulty to be easy, then those modes are, not objectively in the scientific sense, but as objectively as you can get (I would say, objectively for humanity studies standards) normal and easy.

 

Thus, saying the game on easy difficulty mode is 'easy' would for the majority of people be a factually true statement. And for me, that makes it very unreasonable when certain people who still find the game difficult to be insulted when other people claim that the game is objectively easy. In this case, wouldn't anyone with a small bit of self reflexivity be able to realise that the problems they face with the game on issue mode do not arise by the game being too hard, but are also caused by the fact that they have a lower than average skill with playing games?

 

The point I'm trying to make is that in your line of reasoning, you can never make objective statements about a game's difficulty. And if you extend that line of thinking, that statement could go for anything in the field of human culture, because none of our norms and standards are based on anything but systems of human thoughts and are not grounded in nature. But I also think it's a very nihilist way of reasoning. We don't need to feel apologetic for upholding certain standards that are the norm in a given culture. Otherwise, you would in principle not be able to pass judgment on anyone for any behavior anymore whatsoever, because anyone can feel offended about anything going against his or her own personal standards.

 

Apart from that, I suppose people are just worried that this story mode will have cost the devs much time and resources and might have detracted from the content of the game and expansion pack. But like you said, if this makes the game more accessible to more people, without it arguably detracting from the quality for other players (at least by leaving the other options intact), that's also nice.

Edited November 16, 2015 by gogocactus

[Mazisky]

I ask for having a more difficult endgame, nothing else. They just need to tune the act 3-4 difficulty so that the game will be hard even with high lvl characters

Edited November 17, 2015 by Mazisky

[JerekKruger]

If story mode is optional I don't see the problem. I, probably, won't use it, but I don't begrudge people who want to experience the story of Pillars of Eternity but don't enjoy combat, or find combat too difficult even on easy. To address the "they should read books instead comment": (i) an RPG without combat (or with minimal combat) is not the same as a novel, it's a different experience; and (ii) as far as I am aware the Pillars of Eternity story is not available in novel form.

 

As for the concern that introducing this mode will reduce development time from other aspects, I guess that's true to some extent by definition. That said, given the story mode is presumably meant to very easy it shouldn't take much effort to balance: if in doubt err on the side of easier rather than harder and you won't go far wrong. Of course there are other reasons this mode could detract from other aspects, for example if loot is redistributed in this mode to allow player to get access to hard to obtain items more easily. That said I am not overly worried about this, Obsidian have shown there willingness to push forward release dates to make sure their products are finished so I doubt they'll let this story mode stop them from releasing a good product.

[LordFey]

I don't know. People who want to ease the combat just for the sake of enjoying more story should stick to another genre, in my opinion. I know it sounds harsh, but tough combat was always a huge part of IE-like games and to take that away... sounds very wrong.

 

It's like taking away the filler pages of a novel and summarize it to a few pages. You get to the point, but miss out much of what makes it great in the first place.

[Gromnir]

Hey, wait a minute. What if Story Time doesn't reduce difficulty at all but rather is a difficulty-orthogonal setting that simply reduces the number of encounters in the game outright?

am not seeing a point o' your "what if?"  given we is discussing a mode, there is at least the implication that it is an optional feature. a mode that reduces trash battle numbers personal sounds more appealing than one that reduces overall difficulty o' battles in general  (isn't that what the difficulty slider does?), but this ain't an option for Gromnir regardless.  doesn't make a difference to us... and why should it?  if is an optional feature that will make poe more appealing to folks- folks not Gromnir- then am having difficulty seeing a drawback.  

 

*shrug*

 

this ain't like bg or iwd reroll.  is amusing how many folks would complain o' bg and iwd ease but forget to mention that they built a custom party o' characters who all had at least 3 ability scores o' 18 and max hps.  well golly, what a surprise.  optional story mode is not gonna affect how obsidian must need balance the game for Gromnir, so other than the suggestion that storymode is an unnecessary waste o' resources that could be better spent increasing content 'stead o' broadening appeal of the existing game, we see no reasonable argument 'gainst inclusion... and it not make any difference if mode reduces # o' trash battles or difficulty o' such battles.   why would it?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[vv221]

It's like taking away the filler pages of a novel and summarize it to a few pages. You get to the point, but miss out much of what makes it great in the first place.

Hey, nice suggestion!

It would make 'A Song Of Ice And Fire' a very good trilogy, instead of the boring diluted saga it is actually.

[Zenbane]

 

It's like taking away the filler pages of a novel and summarize it to a few pages. You get to the point, but miss out much of what makes it great in the first place.

Hey, nice suggestion!

It would make 'A Song Of Ice And Fire' a very good trilogy, instead of the boring diluted saga it is actually.

 

 

Indeed! A Feast for Crows is an absolute painful read. Similar to Durance in PoE. Both of these could benefit from Story Mode.