Suggestion: Make Durance's Staff Soulbound

[house2fly]

Being soulbound and leveling up as you complete his quests would be so perfect for his story, which is literally about his staff and his soul. I doubt it'll happen at this stage but companions coming with a soulbound weapon would be a cool thing to bear in mind when making the next game.

[why]

So if Durance isn't the way Mr. Avellone intended him to be, what did he intend?

[house2fly]

I'm not sure exactly how much of Durance's backstory as it is was intended by Avellone but his quest was originally going to be a text adventure where you wandered through a dungeon that represented his memories and found out that he had fought the Grieving Mother at some point and they erased each other's memories or something.

Edited February 26, 2016 by house2fly

[Luckmann]

 

 

 

If you look closely at the description of the staff since patch 3.0, it not only has a burning lash but also the property of 'Best Damage Crush/Burn', which is a unique modifier no other staff shares (but is not listed as an explicit enchantment).

Further enchanting and exploiting this can make for a ridiculous effective melee weapon that bypasses normal DR for the much lower burn DR on some enemies.

It's the same for the robe, by the way - although it has listed a burn-proof enchantment, there is another big DR bonus against burn that is not explicitly mentioned in the enchant window.

 

Making the staff soulbound seems a bit like overkill to me since you can just give it to someone else and the staff is not tied to durance from a gameplay perspective. If they were to make it soulbound, I think it should be only able to bind to durance.

On the other hand, I just suggested in the bug forum to make the devils armor soulbound since you are stuck with that thing.

just a thought. you could make the weapon soulbound w/o actual having it improve. have soulbound exclusive to durance. this would allow durance, as a priest who is not particular effective with a staff, to actual make use o' his eponymous weapon.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

The problem is that soulbound weapon can't be enchanted. So making it simply soulbound would actually make it potentially weaker.

 

It is basically more simple to keep the balance by making it evolving soulbound.

 

fair enough. a weak soul bound weapon exclusive to durance doesn't sound bad. have the thresholds for improvement simple be levels... or levels and companion quest thresholds. that being said, am doubting that fans is gonna be satisfied with a weak soulbound... at least based on past experience with such scenarios. fanbase iwd2 kit suggestions were a low watermark for a game from these developers, but has never improved.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Honestly, the power of the staff is completely irrelevant to the discussion, imo. It should be soulbound on principle, based in the narrative, and it should be upgraded at least partly as part of the narrative. If people whine that it's too powerful or too weak, it doesn't matter. It could be a twig, and it'd still be the right thing to do, or it could literally kill gods, and it'd still be the right thing to do.

 

Hell, based on Durance's narrative, I'd even be OK with the staff going completely f***ing inert past a certain point.

 

[...]

 

IMO, complaining about the devils armor suggests itself much more.

Had completely slipped my mind. Given that the Devil of Caroc is literally soul-bound to her armour, having it soul-bound to her would probably be even more appropriate than having Durance's Staff soulbound to him. And the progression should be level-based. Just flat scaling; +DR and some stat (since she gets no bonus as a Construct) would be appropriate.

[Messier-31]

So if Durance isn't the way Mr. Avellone intended him to be, what did he intend?

 

Good question - unfortunately there is little info on that matter...

 

As some may recall, in a recent interview Chris Avellone told PCGamesN that he wrote two companions for Obsidian's upcoming fantasy RPG Pillars of Eternity, but that his original design went too far and had to be scaled down from how he originally imagined these characters:

Sitting down to write two characters for Eternity, Avellone felt as if the chains were off.

 

“I’m not writing for a publisher right now,” he thought. “So I can write about subjects we’re normally not allowed to. What’s interesting about the world of Eternity that I think these two companions could have something to say about?”

 

In the end, Avellone went too far even for his colleagues at Obsidian - those characters won’t appear in the game as he originally intended.​

We were in email correspondence with Chris regarding Codex backer rewards at around the same time the interview was posted, so we decided to ask him about his original companion design and how it changed - to which MCA gave an answer that may be of interest to those who follow Pillars of Eternity's progress:

 

Chris Avellone: "To be clear, and to give credit where credit is due on content contributions (I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder), I wrote the first iterations of two companions (Durance and the Grieving Mother, who have been scaled down to about ¼ of what they were originally, and the Grieving Mother’s mental dungeon was excised as well, which was essentially a stealth adventure game inside her memories).

 

The final versions that are in the game are the province of other narrative designers, and I would be uncomfortable taking credit for the final implementation of the two characters. "​

The Grieving Mother's mental dungeon sounds intriguing, and also Wasteland-ey (remember Finster's brain?), but given Josh Sawyer's recent comment on another forum about "listing as a b-priority" anything that isn't "core gameplay" (requires registration to see, but quoted in full by our dear Roguey here), no wonder it was cut. Could be it didn't fit the game's tone either.

 

_____________________________________________________________

 

Source: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9733

Edited February 26, 2016 by Messier-31

[why]

Thanks, Messier.  Perhaps a bit too convoluted for my meager brain to process right now, but intriguing nonetheless.  I'll ahve to look at this tomorrow because I definitely see two sides on its face.  I think, for a project of Pillars' nature, core gameplay must by necessity claim priority, now I'm intrigued by what might have been.  I saw our housefly friend up above mention that it would be a text adventure and, while I love text adventures from back in the day, I can see not doing it exactly that way.  ...But, assuming it's merely text heavy rather than text exclusive, I think I'd really have enjoyed a more involved version of the events.  Still, I always say the best argument is success and I enjoyed Pillars greatly, so I don't want to second guess the decisions.  Sometimes getting what you want doesn't lead to the best outcome.

[Gromnir]

*rant*

is a game.  is a commercial game that obsidian want to sell.  is not the decade long trial o' james joyce to get dubliners published as he wrote it. developers in the business o' selling games got obvious motivations to satisfy fans.  for the developers, the careometer should always be set to max.  'course the obvious problem is that it is difficult to satisfy most fans with any decision, and giving fans what they actual ask for tends to backfire.  nevertheless, your careometer is busted.  

 

also, no doubt groovy hipsters can deride choices that don't conform to rather nebulous notions o' principle and narrative, but is the rather curious disconnect between the narrative and and rational gameplay mechanic that is at the root o' this entire discussion.  it is the developers, in their questionable wisdom, who gave durance a staff that is integral to the narrative, a staff that he can not make effective use o' in combat in spite of poe gameplay being dominated by squad-based tactical combat.  

 

poe is a game-- first, foremost and last. chrisA himself observed more than once that a good game could have excellent gameplay w/o compelling story.  the reverse, in his opinion, were not true.  a game with excellent story elements but poor gameplay were still a bad game.  where narrative and gameplay considerations is  conflict beyond resolution, narrative should give way.  thankfully the present irrational narrative choice appears to be salvageable. 

 

regardless, from our pov, doppleschwert's proposed solution is excellent, but am not knowing how difficult it would be to implement.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Doppelschwert]

 

[...]

 

IMO, complaining about the devils armor suggests itself much more.

Had completely slipped my mind. Given that the Devil of Caroc is literally soul-bound to her armour, having it soul-bound to her would probably be even more appropriate than having Durance's Staff soulbound to him. And the progression should be level-based. Just flat scaling; +DR and some stat (since she gets no bonus as a Construct) would be appropriate.

 

I filed a bug report and they replied by saying the missing attributes on her racial are not intended and that they've now taken this bug into their database. Whether they will change the armor is up to the devs, but they asked for some feedback here:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84661-301-devil-of-caroc-inferior-to-all-other-npcs/

[Luckmann]

Thanks, Messier.  Perhaps a bit too convoluted for my meager brain to process right now, but intriguing nonetheless.  I'll ahve to look at this tomorrow because I definitely see two sides on its face.  I think, for a project of Pillars' nature, core gameplay must by necessity claim priority, now I'm intrigued by what might have been. [...]

 

The way I remember from somewhere, there were some extremely serious undertones to the characters of Durance and Grieving Mother, where the one had tortured the other, believing her to be a Watcher (which is still part of her backstory), and if memory serves, there was some hint of rape-y things, too. Supposedly, this lead to the shattering of both minds, which is why Grieving Mother is so screwed up when you find her and why Durance may not even remember his real name.

 

I have no idea where I picked that up, by the way, it was in some discussion way back. Presumably, they shied away from such serious content matter, especially since you interact with these characters on more fundamental level than NPC #321 that was implied to be tortured at some point.

 

 

*rant*

As is often the case, you willfully missed the point. The relative power of the staff is largely meaningless, because it should be soulbound either way. If it is this powerful or that powerful ultimately doesn't matter, and you should just aim somewhere in-between, regardless of individual complaints. The issue with caring too much about people is shown no clearer than with your own example given, with Icewind Dale 2.

 

Because you're right, and I agreed with you, as often is the case, unless you now want to argue that because the careometer should always be set to max, it should take precedence, and thus the staff should be overpowered, because as you say, if you make it a weak-ish soulbound, it would still not be enough.

 

Should, or should not, the staff be soulbound? Yes, it should.

 

Should it be soulbound, whether it is powerful or not? Yes, it should.

 

Should we care about people that no doubt would constantly argue that it should be more powerful than it is, no matter how powerful it is at any point throughout it's career as a soulbound weapon? No, we should not.

 

Do what's right for the game isn't always the same as doing what people want. That's what you should care about, the game, not what people want, because most people have no idea what they want, or what it'd do with the game, as evidenced by any remove-all-resource-management-thread ever, or the fact that people complain about Wizards, Priests and Druids no longer having utterly insane power spikes compared to any other class.

 

People want instant and constant gratification, but instant and constant gratification rarely make for a good game. Or a good dish. Or a good anything, really.

 

As for the proposed solutions, my preferred one is to make it Universal or note it down as specifically affected by Inspired Flame, even though it normally does not apply to Staffs, make it Soulbound, and have it be soulbound to Durance and ever usable only by Durance, and actually have it progress rather powerfully. Like you noted previously, Durance is actually rather ineffective with the staff, either way, and making the staff progress rather powerfully would help compensate for that.

 

But again, I always wanted it to be an Arquebus anyway. Categorize it as an arquebus and have him shoot fireballs with it, using a wand or sceptre animation, or something, I dunno. It'd arguably necessitate kicking the established narrative in the jewels to make it fit elegantly.

 

I filed a bug report and they replied by saying the missing attributes on her racial are not intended and that they've now taken this bug into their database. Whether they will change the armor is up to the devs, but they asked for some feedback here:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84661-301-devil-of-caroc-inferior-to-all-other-npcs/

Huh, well good. I thought they just didn't give her any bonuses like that because the effects from being a Construct were already so powerful. That makes her crazier than I thought. That said, I still think it should be a soulbound. It's actually a pretty good armour, thought, especially once you've upgraded it a bit. I just want it to be soulbound for thematic reasons, it's unlikely to be balance-upsetting in any way.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Luckmann

[Gromnir]

luck likes hearing self talk.

 

doppleschwert solution is not soulbound: universal and equippable only by durance.  regardless o' your pointless proselytizing 'bout what durance staff should be, one solution you seem to be ok with is having durance staff not be soulbound? okie dokie.  am not seeing need for more discussion, but...

 

*sigh*

 

"Do what's right for the game isn't always the same as doing what people want."

 

yes?  am agreeing with you.  so what?  doesn't change fact that developers gotta care 'bout players and their concerns.  satisfied customers is good 'cause they tend to buy future games.  duh. sometimes ignoring individual player concerns is best. players often want ridiculous, as with iwd2.  give folks the deathmaster kit likely coulda' been worked into narrative, and am doubting the developers objected for matters o' principle.  give players over-powered, and then they complain how easy were the game.  is precisely 'cause the developers care that they sometimes gotta reject. is many reasons developers gotta deny player pleas. players often want impossible.  players want pointless that wastes limited developer resources.  players is often much divided.  heck, more than a few players want bg style per-kill xp.  players can be nutty.  the thing is, developers gotta decide what is most likely gonna make for an enjoyable game, which is precisely why the careometer is always at max even if the developers sometimes gotta reject player desires.  nebulous notion o' maintaining principle or narrative as the reasons for making durance staff soulbound?

 

*snort* 

 

HA! Good Fun!