So... what's exactly the stash?

[Gromnir]

 

 

 

 

[...],  yes? 

 

HA! Good Fun!

It seems that we agree that the current stash is unexplainable, that it was a pragmatic decision, and that they have to be made. For you this one is of no significance, for me it has little. So...yes;).

 

agreed.  only reason we respond is 'cause genesis poster observed that the absence o' an explanation destroyed immersion and you observed that, "details like this are crucial in building general atmoshpere of the game."  am not gonna get into all the things wrong with immersion complaints, but our point simple were that the degree to which the stash destroys immersion is highly subjective.  is such details crucial?  not universal.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Wouldn't you agree that the while every single little detail can be deemed unimportant and dismissed, the totality of them is important in building atmosphere? At least for me a high polish brings a feeling of coherence and believability into a work of fiction. And a large amount of poorly treated little things creates a somewhat repelling feel. An example of that, I think, is the case of using multiple languages in a movie. Making every character speak the language he should speak requires a lot of work for the creators of the movie, and often can be safely ignored because the audience won't miss it very much. But when it is actually introduced, it's something that matters - at least to me.

 

Are there any "general immersion theories" out there? A thought ocurred to me that people have different claims on what makes a game immersive, and whether "immersion" is important or not. But probably many, possibly including me, don't *know* what they really want;).

 

PS. I've got a better example. Running everywhere in video games is annoying. There has to be some kind of fast travel system. But if it's well integrated with the lore and incorporated into the game mechanics, it contributes to the game. The example is Morrowind - how awkard the directions sometimes were, and flawed the journal, the combination of silk striders, boats and teleports surely deepend the famous "immersion"...especially in comparison with  Oblivion, in which Bethesta took a more pragmatic approach.

 

 

if there is general immersion theories, they is gonna necessarily identify the inherent subjectivity o' immersion.  before "immersion" is always some possessive pronoun.  is his immersion.  is her immersion.  is their immersion but not necessarily our immersion.  and given just how much difference there is 'tween your crucial elements and his or her crucial elements, what sorta guidance do you give developers to decide on what is actual necessary for immersion?

 

am thinking we both agree that not everything that adds to "immersion," even when we speak only o' your immersion, is crucial.  again, you said that, "details like this are crucial in building general atmosphere of the game." why is the stash crucial?  explain.  why is this detail more crucial than the literal thousands o' other things you is willing to overlook... or things you don't notice but is critical to others.  poe combats is complete unrealistic, as is all crpg combats.  is it necessary for us to describe all the potential immersion killing aspects o' poe combat?  hope not.  from the manner in which armour behaves to fatigue to what happens to the human body when giant rocks or lightning bolts or pillars o' flame scorch us, poe (and every other crpg to date) is so crazy-implausible that your immersion should be complete undone.

 

most use o' poe shadows (not the monster) is wrong 'cause they do not behave according to the inverse square law.  the heat and flame from fireballs disappears into walls rather than deforming based on shape o' the container/room into which the fireball were released.  we inexplicably travel everywhere on foot. how could any plausible  economy function with all the poe gold apparent lying around? etc.  the aforementioned stuff ain't just internal logic.  we get that magic works, so we accept.  nevertheless, magic shouldn't change the fundamental manner in which light or fire behaves without an explanation.  perhaps none o such details is crucial to you, but they is likely crucial to somebody.  the folks who find the technical aspects o' shadows to be immersion killing is gonna be hard pressed to explain why shadows is so crucial, but stash isn't.  

 

so explain why stash is crucial, but shadows conforming to the inverse square rule is not?  explain the importance o' a rationale for stash w/o providing what is essential little more than your personal definition o' immersion.  be specific.  don't reference immersion in your explanation. look at from developer pov and try and figure out specific what is crucial 'bout stash immersion that is different than all the other implausibilities related to combat, economy and physics that folks routinely accept.

 

regardless, if all such details is crucial, then you has made the definition o' crucial meaningless, no?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOcxnQRUhMM

 

is as close as you is gonna get to seeing what realistic combat with swords looks like.  real medieval/renaissance era combat is even more ugly and brutal.  now have harvey keitel or keith carradine fight a bipedal rhinoceros (typical ogre in armour) wielding a hundred pound club. and heck, in poe after the two gentlemen in the duelists video get a good night's sleep, they will be complete healed.  

 

...

 

but what 'bout muh 'murshun?

 

 

am getting that some folks want more reality in their game.  is an esthetic choice that people try and label as immersion or whatever, but regardless o' what it is called, it is genuine.  the subjective reasons for finding one practical concession to game pragmatism acceptable and others offensive is difficult to explain and even harder for developers to make general rules o' applicability regarding.  we devolve into comparisons to other games suggesting that game X did immersion better than poe, but that game Y did worse.  in this thread we have seen folks identify features from other games that they find to be more believable than the poe implementation.  is all very subjective and vague, and as you noted earlier, it is the "totality" of a multitude o' elements and features that to you is "important in building atmosphere." 

 

oh, and we disagree that "details like this are crucial in building general atmosphere of the game."  the degree to which we become engaged in or emotionally involved in a crpg such as  poe typically does not hinge at all on such details, and am admitting our own inexplicable biases 'bout what perversions o' reality is excessive. more overarching issues related to the lore o' the setting is important to us.  that the characters within that setting have believable motivations is important to us.  is hundreds (thousands) o' things more crucial to us and our emotional involvement in the story than the mechanics behind the poe stash.  is a FANTASY crpg.  is a fantasy crpGAME.  the fact that is fantasy AND a game means that we accept that very little in the title is gonna conform to the minutiae o' reality.  reason why stash functions as it does?  'cause poe is a Game and the developers saw how a couple decades worth o' crpg players actual played games.  

 

but as we said, we got our own inexplicable biases.  given all the thousands o' impossible and unbelievable elements we routine accept in a fantasy crpg, we is always annoyed by anime-inspired giant weapons.  why is giant swords worse than impossible shadows? is an esthetic choice.  am not gonna try and wrap it up in some kinda gestalt immersion bit.  giant swords and weapons that would be difficult to lift much less wield crosses a fuzzy esthetic line... unless 'course the game itself has a kinda cartoon-based esthetic such as the wildstar mmo.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 28, 2016 by Gromnir

[Stoner]

Stop it guys, it's fanatasy world, you can explain it any way you want and all would be legit.

 

I really love devs for doing it the way it is, I also hope they did same stuff with supplies but oh well...

Edited February 29, 2016 by Stoner

[Elerond]

Infinity stash and not explaining it is just one of multiple design decision in game to prevent cumbersome gameplay features even if it makes game less simultaneous or immersive elements. It goes with such decisions like, merchants having infinite coffer, every item has fixed price, weapons, armor, etc. don't break, you can enchant, cook, etc. every where, people don't question that you run every where weapons drawn, you don't need to wait days, weeks, months that your party heals up, you don't need actually carry/consume food, you have journal that keeps track your quests, you can change your companion in and out from your party regardless where they are in world, you can respec your characters, you have infinite wallet, there is just one currency, and so on.

 

Official explanation for stash is that it is bottom of party's backpacks (making accessing stuff put there quite slow process, which is why access to stash is limited in expert mode), where inventory slots or top of said backpacks (and therefore somewhat easy to access but not so that you cold access them in combat) and equipment slots and quick items are items that characters wear, carry in their hands and belts etc. where they are quickly to access. 

[kvaak]

Apart from some roguelikes like Sil I can't really think of RPGs where a restricted inventory adds anything but frustration to the game. Ultima's bagception most certainly is not a good example. I wouldn't classify Darkest Dungeon as an RPG but it does a decent job, you have to juggle with gold vs. supplies potentially providing a larger benefit. It's not without its flaws though, you're heavily disincentivized from doing the longest dungeons as you end up having to throw a colossal portion of the loot away. Shorter dungeons fill your bags anyway so might as well do those.

 

There are some decent implementations but generally restricted inventory doesn't add any complexity or force you to make decisions, you just have to dump vendor trash (or equivalent) more often. E.g. aforementioned Sil avoids this by making loot scarce, highly desirable (even stuff like junk weapons can be used as throwing weapons) and most importantly by simply removing anything you don't take with you. If you leave an item on the floor as you leave a level it's gone forever, you can't go back and grab it later when you'd need it.

 

I don't see how PoE could reasonably implement anything like this. You get your own fort, what could ever prevent you from stashing every single piece of Dyrwoodan clothing you find while still using most of your space for useful items? You could add things like time limits, degradation, item destruction etc. but all of those create entirely separate problems while trying to solve a nonexistent one.

 

 

 

II could do with far more interesting and satisfying non combat or conversation systems, I am hardly challenged or even stimulated by rote repetition of the same streamlined features every RPG is now limited to. I remember fumbling practise on a lute in Betrayal at Krondor, swapping tips on smithing with a canny Dwarf in the Mac Mordain Cadal, baking bread in Britannia, returning to the jewellers with a bag full of valuable gems and jewellery, travelling to the Royal Mint and exchanging gold nuggets and bars for currency, trying to rob said Mint in the dark of the night, stopping in the wilderness to gather reagents, solving cunning riddles on Moredhel chests, using spells outside combat for a host of useful and interesting effects, examining my cloth map and using a sextant to judge my position in the world, sitting down on a chair in an inn, listening to the house band play their music, ordering food and drink and then relaxing while the world moved on around me and the NPCs went about their daily routine. I may well have been spoiled however, but should not a wise consumer want and ask for more, or at least the equal of decades old systems?

 

(Some) modern RPGs still in fact do (some of) these things. The difference is mostly that instead of giving you a practice lute with 100 charges and a 1/3 chance to succeed (invisible to the player of course) you get 33 charges and guaranteed success. Did you also enjoy watching the utterly clueless Owyn fail to pick that lock in Mac Mordain Cadal over and over and over and over again until he's finally a master locksmith, having never touched any other lock in his entire life?

Edited February 28, 2016 by kvaak

[Katarack21]

An army of invisible and invulnerable donkeys that follows you trough the world?

 

A bottomless bag of holding?

 

Or are you in possesion of a magical wand capable of reducing objects to a miniature size?

 

 

I'm curious...

 

 

 

PS. I'm dissapointed with that feature... I mean, if you are trying to enhance immersion with the limited camp supplies (a great idea), you shoudn't destroy it with an inventory of infinite capacity.

It's gameplay and story segregation. They decided that inventory management sucks, destroys immersion, frustrates players, and in general is one of the major complaints against IE games. It wasn't a design decision they reached easily; there were a *LOT* of debates about it.

 

I'm *REALLY* glad they did it. Inventory management is one of my great, undying hatreds.

[Baron Pampa]

@Gromnir

 

 

You're right. Famous immersion is a highly subjective term, and should be used with care. And as I haven't thought about it well enough, I've made some rash statements. Stash isn't crucial - it's one of the details. And it's the totality of details which might hugely contribute to my immersion, but isn't really necessary if the core aspects of a game are well written. There were games which didn't care to much about details similar to stash, but were totally „believable” when I were playing them. There were other, like Morrowind, which managed to hugely improve my impression with small things, like the travel, spell or alchemy system.

 

PoE is a game with great atmosphere, although it's not helped by things like the stash, crafting system, or frequent combat. In fact I'd like to play an RPG with a little number of fights which allow for failure withoud ending the game, and are meaningful for the story told. It's not something I expect from Pillars, it's not their paradigm. But I count on Torment: Tides of Numenera in that regard. However, necessity to finish another stupid fight with 2 adra animats in Sun in Shadow was something which distracted me from the atmosphere and the game's story in my first playthrough, and as such was unpleasant for me. I'd rather walk through empty, forgotten halls to meet Thaos at the end.

 

There are things I really like in PoE and IE-style equipment system. I like the varied magical effects of items, the possible synergies between them, the excitement of getting something new. I like to swap my items so I'm better prepared for a fight...or do I?

A typical element of fantasy story is hero's journey. So is the case of Pillars story: you travel from Far Away to Gilded Vale, from there you go to Caed Nua, Defiance Bay, Twin Elms and, finally, Sun in Shadow. It's a journey in it's physical meaning, it's also a spiritual journey of self-discovery. At least that's something I see in PoE, and in many fantasy stories. I don't claim it makes sense and I don't care - somehow it makes sense for me. And I consider the travel an important motif in these kind of stories.

 

Two of my hobbies are mountain hiking and hitchhiking. They are important for me in keeping myself in good humour and learning about the world. Hitchhiking allows to meet a wide range of people I wouldn't normaly meet, and involves prolonged talks with them. In the mountains I find some kind of spirituality. Preparing for a shorter or a longer trip is crucial for your safety and enjoyment you get out from it. And part of preparation is packing yourself. In this process, you must consider what you must have with you, and then for each item you don't really need, consider their weight, size and usability. The efficiency and speed of my packing is something I consider to be one of the elements of my general experience in travelling. It's an organic part of the journey itself, and it requires several choices.

 

PoE system devoids you of any choice - why bother, when you can take every single thing that exists? Even if you don't use "use stash from anywhere" option, you still have enough space to make any kind of preparation meaningless...especially since you can craft things 5 sec before boss fight. And then just take all the loot without looking at it. And that's why I dislike it. It's certainly not helping in feeling that the hero is travelling - in my experience, it works against that feeling. And that's a feeling I find to be dear and important to me in such stories.

 

At that point, I'd like to repeat myself: I found the game to be awe-inspiring. It had great atmosphere, and it certainly was immersive for me, for various reasons, mainly writing, lore and the characters. It's just that some minor things I've found to be annoying - like stash. Not crucial, not immersion breaking, not important - but annoying. For highly personal reasons I've tried to explain without refering to immersion.

 

 

TL;DR Stash is neither crucial nor immersion breaking, it's just annoying and contributes in a slightly negative way. Personal reasons for why I find it bad. Statement: Totality of details might enhance atmosphere.

[Nonek]

 

II could do with far more interesting and satisfying non combat or conversation systems, I am hardly challenged or even stimulated by rote repetition of the same streamlined features every RPG is now limited to. I remember fumbling practise on a lute in Betrayal at Krondor, swapping tips on smithing with a canny Dwarf in the Mac Mordain Cadal, baking bread in Britannia, returning to the jewellers with a bag full of valuable gems and jewellery, travelling to the Royal Mint and exchanging gold nuggets and bars for currency, trying to rob said Mint in the dark of the night, stopping in the wilderness to gather reagents, solving cunning riddles on Moredhel chests, using spells outside combat for a host of useful and interesting effects, examining my cloth map and using a sextant to judge my position in the world, sitting down on a chair in an inn, listening to the house band play their music, ordering food and drink and then relaxing while the world moved on around me and the NPCs went about their daily routine. I may well have been spoiled however, but should not a wise consumer want and ask for more, or at least the equal of decades old systems?

 

(Some) modern RPGs still in fact do (some of) these things. The difference is mostly that instead of giving you a practice lute with 100 charges and a 1/3 chance to succeed (invisible to the player of course) you get 33 charges and guaranteed success. Did you also enjoy watching the utterly clueless Owyn fail to pick that lock in Mac Mordain Cadal over and over and over and over again until he's finally a master locksmith, having never touched any other lock in his entire life?

 

Yes i'm aware that failure is despised and streamllining prioritised, however personally I regard failure as an essential part of any game, and positively desired personally. However with Owyn I did not face that problem, I boosted his lockpicking skill by having him practise on the first pickable chest on the road south that one encounters, after equipping an Amulet of the Upright Man in Chapter 2. This was hardly a great discomfort, a waste of time or so very unrealistic as he spent considerable time travelling with both Locklear and Jimmy the Hand and learning from the same people they encountered who taught them on the road.

 

In my opinion this fanatical obsession with abstracting everything, rather than creating a logical, detailed and intuitive gameworld has gone far too far, yes of course the game contains fantasy elements, but it contains far more elements of reality and fantasy is created only by having mundane elements to oppose, if everything is handwaved away, there are no limits and no progression, well excuse me but personally I find that such half finished things are constant irritations and the fantasy elements undermined.

 

If a quarter of a century old game can create a logical, intuitive and excellent fun inventory system then surely this should be a simple task now rather than requiring any explanation be handwaved away, after all if we continue on this path of "convenience" players will resent even playing the game and just want to be told a non interactive story eventually. However I realise i'm upsetting the status quo by criticising an aspect of the game that has been abstracted and I believe I have made my point and opinion known so I shall retire from the conversation, lest I ruffle more feathers.

[why]

It's weird, but I agree about the idea that failure should be a consequence, not a game ender and yet I disagree about the stash. That's the way of things. I think the way failure works in these games encourages reloading rather than exploring what those consequences mean in the long run. Sometimes, failure leads to understanding that yields greater success. If there were one argument that the 'no saves' crowd has in its favor, it would be that continuing the story after a failure, like setbacks in real life, can end up in something transcendent. Inventory, however, is never transcendent for me. Different stroke for... you know the drill.

 

I will say something that I find both strange and humorous. I've read one novel and one short story by Conrad, and I enjoyed them. Now, because some dude up above links a video, now I'm compelled to read The Duel. Forums are funny that way.

[Uni]

What i do in my current run is to not use stash for weapons, shields and armors, aka big things. So rings, scrolls and other small/light stuff can go into pockets, but i cant carry thousand chainmails from raedrics hold to become instantly rich. This feels like a reasonable compromise in terms of realism.

 

Im only just starting act 2 but this feels like a good decicion. I can get loot and sell it, but not in ridiculous quantities. Getting 4k gold from raedrics is a nice chunk, but repairing a keep in ruined state is not cheap, nor is aloths wizard college. That tall grass sure is juicy but at this rate it also takes some serious saving.

 

The money rewards from quests always felt meaningless as thousands of xaurip spears passively fulfilled all your monetarily needs, so im kind of joyfully waiting to become broke and have ingame gold rewards actually be useful.

[kvaak]

Yes i'm aware that failure is despised and streamllining prioritised, however personally I regard failure as an essential part of any game, and positively desired personally. However with Owyn I did not face that problem, I boosted his lockpicking skill by having him practise on the first pickable chest on the road south that one encounters, after equipping an Amulet of the Upright Man in Chapter 2. This was hardly a great discomfort, a waste of time or so very unrealistic as he spent considerable time travelling with both Locklear and Jimmy the Hand and learning from the same people they encountered who taught them on the road.

 

In my opinion this fanatical obsession with abstracting everything, rather than creating a logical, detailed and intuitive gameworld has gone far too far, yes of course the game contains fantasy elements, but it contains far more elements of reality and fantasy is created only by having mundane elements to oppose, if everything is handwaved away, there are no limits and no progression, well excuse me but personally I find that such half finished things are constant irritations and the fantasy elements undermined.

 

If a quarter of a century old game can create a logical, intuitive and excellent fun inventory system then surely this should be a simple task now rather than requiring any explanation be handwaved away, after all if we continue on this path of "convenience" players will resent even playing the game and just want to be told a non interactive story eventually. However I realise i'm upsetting the status quo by criticising an aspect of the game that has been abstracted and I believe I have made my point and opinion known so I shall retire from the conversation, lest I ruffle more feathers.

 

 

See, that's the thing, I found Ultima's bagception ridiculous rather than any of the things you listed, and I know people who share that opinion.

 

I'd say the single most immersive CRPG I've played (if not the best overall) would be Gothic 2 which came out in 2003. You have craftsmen going on their daily routines, you have priests loudly preaching in shrines in the middle of the city, you have highwaymen attacking you along chokepoints on the road with no warning, no cutscenes, nothing. At best they'll throw an insult or two at you. You can't use the forge or the whetstone if the blacksmith is currently using them, and all of this is implemented in a way that doesn't notably hinder gameplay. On top of that you have a fairly sizable world to explore, interesting characters, interesting story, all the good stuff.

 

And then you have the eternally dreaded infinite inventory space with no explanation at all. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Edited February 29, 2016 by kvaak

[Caribou]

I would be totally be one of the guys walking back and forth to town to collect every scrap of loot, especially at the earlier levels.  I do understand the point that inventory management should be a consideration though. I don't know what the solution would be, maybe allow for the purchase of a finite amount of scrolls that can teleport your loot to some merchant?  Make it automatically happen when resting?  Pack mules that can be equipped in the pet slot?

[jsaving]

PS. I'm dissapointed with that feature... I mean, if you are trying to enhance immersion with the limited camp supplies (a great idea), you shoudn't destroy it with an inventory of infinite capacity.

I'm having trouble understanding the realism argument for camping supplies in PoE, as our Scout troop occasionally camps for multiple weeks without needing to resupply (tents aren't consumed after each use!).  I also don't see how PoE's implementation of limited camping supplies is realistic, as the protagonist can hold 4/2/1 supplies if journeying alone but additional party members somehow find themselves unable to carry any. 

 

Don't get me wrong -- I like how PoE handled limited camping supplies and hope PoE2 will do something similar.  But it works *despite* its lack of realism, not because it is realistic.  It is a compromise, in other words, between game balance, ease of use and realism.

 

I see the stash in similar terms.  It isn't especially realistic to let people carry an unlimited number of +0 weapons and armor -- the main purpose of the stash -- but there are few to no balance implications from letting this happen and it's certainly a lot more convenient than making players trudge back to an inn every time their inventory fills up.  It's unrealistic, to be sure, but realism isn't the only or even main consideration in these kinds of decisions.

Edited February 29, 2016 by jsaving

[Sedrefilos]

You either have only few critical items dropped by opponents and have a limited inventory or have every opponent drop trash and give players unlimited inventory. They went for the latter.

 

If you try to mix both systems, you get Diablo's tedious "loot all junk - teleport to town - sell junk - teleport back - move two more meters - collect more trash - repeat" system

[Aramintai]

Iirc, during PoE development, there was a push to remove certain player activities which the deveoplers determined to be "degenerative gameplay". It was observed by the developers that's certain players, not being able to carry all the loot at once, would walk back and forth from the loot drop locations until they had gathered all the loot. This activity was determined to be "degenerative gameplay", thus the creation of an infinite stash to remove this scourge. No, I'm not kidding.

Ok, if we can have infinite amount of heavy armors and weapons in the stash then why on earth are we allowed to carry only 4 camping supplies? Is it not degenerative gameplay to go back and forth to some merchant to buy more of those?

Edited February 29, 2016 by Aramintai

[Baron Pampa]

You either have only few critical items dropped by opponents and have a limited inventory or have every opponent drop trash and give players unlimited inventory. They went for the latter.

 

If you try to mix both systems, you get Diablo's tedious "loot all junk - teleport to town - sell junk - teleport back - move two more meters - collect more trash - repeat" system

I've got a personal preference for the first option:). What's funny - it's actually more 'gamey'. 

[why]

They made a reasonable decision based on what they wanted and what they thought would be most acceptible to the greater portion of players. There is simply no way they wouldn't have someone complaining about something and they didn't want people doing what i always did in these games, which is fillilng up and making multiple trips. If they didn't implement the stash they way they did, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, I would have preferred it that way, but that's just how it is. Personally, since this is all about nit-picky beefs, I still don't like the whole "Might" idea. It still strikes me as dumb. Make it Prowess or something.

[Nonek]

Against my better judgement I have to ask with all this talk of traipsing back and forth to a dungeon or wherever, why it is that players expect everything they have left to stay there? It would seem a very simple measure to have items taken when a character leaves, by thieves, corpse pickers, monsters or what have you, thus you stop the traipsing back and forth for tat and don't need a progression free bag of holding.

 

 

See, that's the thing, I found Ultima's bagception ridiculous rather than any of the things you listed, and I know people who share that opinion.

 

I'd say the single most immersive CRPG I've played (if not the best overall) would be Gothic 2 which came out in 2003. You have craftsmen going on their daily routines, you have priests loudly preaching in shrines in the middle of the city, you have highwaymen attacking you along chokepoints on the road with no warning, no cutscenes, nothing. At best they'll throw an insult or two at you. You can't use the forge or the whetstone if the blacksmith is currently using them, and all of this is implemented in a way that doesn't notably hinder gameplay. On top of that you have a fairly sizable world to explore, interesting characters, interesting story, all the good stuff.

 

And then you have the eternally dreaded infinite inventory space with no explanation at all. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

 

 

You might very well have done so, I found that a system like Ultimas which is simple and intuitive because its based on what happens in reality for me as an avid hiker (I carry my supplies in backpacks and other containers hardly a mystery or egregious,) was easy to understand, satisfying to manage and no great difficulty at all to maintain. Combined with a home base in Sentri's House or aboard the Golden Ankh inventory management became extremely enjoyable and worthwhile. I know quite a few individuals who share that opinion as well, though I represent only my opinion.

 

Gothic 2 (and the first game for that matter) was I admit quite nice in terms of trying to create detail and a believable gameworld, the best implementation since Ultima, however I found the limitless inventory diminished the game for me and the city Khorinis (? its been a while since release) was a little too small for my liking.

 

Edit: Re the camping supplies situational oddity, as I remember from the kickstarter they were at one point bandying about the idea of having fixed campsites in the game that one could use, like the well room the Fellowship finds in Moria for instance. However this was changed to supplies at some point, at what stage in development i'm not sure.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Nonek

[Ymarsakar]

I liked Jagged Alliance 2's inventory, especially the modded backpacks and tactical kits.

 

For Pillars, I probably would have added in a squire, since even the Spartans and medieval knights had squires to carry all their weapons. Which often took a horse, let alone a mule, to carry per noble.

 

Instead of a companion, an equal like Eder, I would probably add in a game mechanic like the squire as NPC, following the Lord of Caed Nua. If they get weighed down, teleport items to the keep using some version of dimensional shift. Then put the low value items on a market and sell them.

 

That's difficult to do in an RPG that lacks simulation, a market, and a human GM to bend the rules.

 

When game mechanics become too rigid, people make it smoother, which also makes it shallower or less deep. Sort of like Mass Effect 3 vs ME 1 with the cinematic and more simplified browser game explorations.

 

There are games that focus much on simulations, such as Crusader Kings 2, Eve Online, Crow fall even.

 

The ability of a CRPG like Pillars to simulate things to a high fidelity has issues with it.

 

If they wanted to simulate the reality of a world behind the RPG rules, they would have looters, scavengers, squires, and all these other NPCs who have agendas and jobs, not just "quests" and "reactivity". Systems that run independent of the player. Not to the extent of a Morrowind or Skyrim, but still a mechanical gameplay system.

 

Could just be a card collection game like Witcher has, except here you rank up your looters/squires vs the rest of the world trying to take your loot. That way, instead of "degenerative gameplay", there's just more gameplay. But that requires thinking outside and even breaking the CRPG box so to speak. Genre mashing.

 

The adventure text box can also be a game within a game, if they get good enough at it. The detonate grenades on corpses power in Xcom 2 was also a good way to use physics in a world without providing loot all the time. In the first sequence of the adventure text in Pillars, you threw your weapon to save a companion. What happened to that kind of gameflow later on? There's plenty of weapons sitting around on the ground later on. Find someway to use it. Survival games love that kind of crafting tree and junk material they use to make good stuff from.

 

Planescape Torment and Torment Tides of N, does a better job of creating NPCs and characters with different social status. Different topic now. This changes how I view the gameworld, even if the interaction is the same as clicking on dialogue. Each character is different when interacting with them, because they do different things to you or with you, and your reason to talk to them isn't always about getting quests and xp. I remember seeing the first zombie in game, and fresh from my Baldur's Gate II campaigns, I was like "okay, first enemy to kill, I'll click on em and start bashing em in". Boy, was I surprised when a dialogue opened up instead. Then there was this Lich I wanted something from, and the Lich told me to get out, so I attacked the Lich after pre buffing, thinking there would be a boss fight. I got teleported to location Z, every time I tried to attack the Lich. After a few loading screens to get back, and trying again, I stopped. A difference in power scale that wasn't based on stats.

 

The camping supplies were designed by Josh Sawyer so that people would use all their abilities and treasure them more, instead of just rest spamming every time they want to fight. I think they said something about how they realized later on that nobody had decided where on each map the reusable or so camping grounds were. In some maps, you can actually see camping grounds. But they would have render them in for all of them, and rendering was already taking them quite a bit of time in the beginning. 12-24 hours I think per map, until they optimized it down.

 

The stash was initially limited access, but people kept microing it so the option was to make it unlimited.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Katarack21]

Against my better judgement I have to ask with all this talk of traipsing back and forth to a dungeon or wherever, why it is that players expect everything they have left to stay there? It would seem a very simple measure to have items taken when a character leaves, by thieves, corpse pickers, monsters or what have you, thus you stop the traipsing back and forth for tat and don't need a progression free bag of holding

 

Yes, because losing the loot that you worked so hard to achieve is even *BETTER* than making it difficult to get! How did I not think of that.

 

At the end of the day, the fact is some people find inventory management immersive and realistic, and some people find it incredibly frustrating and anti-immersion. I fall into the latter camp. I'm very glad they instituted the stash, just as I'm glad they allowed an option for non-permanent death.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Katarack21

[why]

Get rid of companions like Eder and have squires? lol I honestly can't figure out if your post were serious, ironic, sardonic, or what, Ymarsakar.

 

I actually like the stash in some ways, but it was one of the hardest aspects of the game for me. However, as much as I liked some of the Ultima games, I don't like all of the tedium entailed in some of the more elaborate inventory schemes. If I had to choose between having a teleporting squire and the stash, I'll stick with the stash. The strain on the credulity isn't any greater and I like having companions like Eder. If the argument against the stash is, "I liked [game x] better!" then I would suggest playing the other game. I don't know what they're going to do for the next game, but I haven't seen a suggestion so far that's any better than the stash other than maybe a strict weight allowance approach and, the more I play the game, the more I'm leaning towards the stash.

Edited March 1, 2016 by why

[Katarack21]

I haven't seen a suggestion so far that's any better than the stash other than maybe a strict weight allowance approach and, the more I play the game, the more I'm leaning towards the stash.

That's my personal *least* favorite option. It annoys and frustrates the hell out of me. If I wanted to play complicated addition and subtraction games, I'd go and do so. What I really, really don't want is to have to compute 400-23-35-67+98+23-24 just to figure out exactly how much of this dragon hoard I get to actually take home--and then end up with a tiny fraction of it while the rest is destroyed by arbitrary timers.

 

Nothing in BG pissed me off nearly as much as leaving five Ankheg shells just lying around the ground because, apparently, developers hate fun.

[Nonek]

 

Against my better judgement I have to ask with all this talk of traipsing back and forth to a dungeon or wherever, why it is that players expect everything they have left to stay there? It would seem a very simple measure to have items taken when a character leaves, by thieves, corpse pickers, monsters or what have you, thus you stop the traipsing back and forth for tat and don't need a progression free bag of holding

 

 

Yes, because losing the loot that you worked so hard to achieve is even *BETTER* than making it difficult to get! How did I not think of that.

 

Personally I wouldn't be bothered about a vast horde of identikit rubbish being stolen by others, i'd just take the useful and valuable items and leave tat behind, but if others have an emotional attachment to vendor trash then...well good for them.

[Gfted1]

Ok, if we can have infinite amount of heavy armors and weapons in the stash then why on earth are we allowed to carry only 4 camping supplies? Is it not degenerative gameplay to go back and forth to some merchant to buy more of those?

Sorry, I cant remember the mental gymnastics used at the time to reach that conclusion.

[DreamWayfarer]

Get rid of companions like Eder and have squires? lol I honestly can't figure out if your post were serious, ironic, sardonic, or what, Ymarsakar.

While I wouldn't get rid of Edér, I wouldn't mind having a squire or a merchant with a donkey following the party, fleeing from monsters while carrying our stuff and being snarky about it all.

 

EDIT: and I wouldn't mind having loot simply disappear, as long as we are given time to loot before being teleported by cutscenes(looking at you Darzir. Almost forgot to pick up your ring of changing heart.)

Edited March 1, 2016 by DreamWayfarer

[Ymarsakar]

In addition to Eder and story companions meant for combat, I should probably clarify. The game is balanced on BG2 style parties, 1-6, and that really should be left alone for standard reasons. Having more relationships between players and npcs, npcs and companions, would help to flesh out some things, that can't be easily done if you just dialogue everyone from the player's viewpoint. Whether in game that's done by creating 3d assets or using the adventure skit engine box, doesn't matter all that much. Invisible squires in game will make as much sense as invisible infinite stashes.

 

For the player, they only really care about the quality of interaction and whether it is fun or not. If it is fun, people can suspend a lot of disbelief. If the content is right. If the content isn't right, people will find all kinds of reasons to say it is unrealistic or wrong or badly designed.

 

Eder's relationship to the player is stable, as equals or slightly less than equals because Eder is an NPC vs the player who is an (admin) user. In feudalism, there's a big deal to how people deal with people above them and below them in station. Crusader Kings 2 provides a good simulation of that, movies and Hollywood tends to fall over themselves ape ing the trappings of feudalism and nobility without actually providing critical information about how it worked back then. Which is ironic, given how much social status affected people back then and even now, plus how fantasy settings like Pillars tend to use nobility titles a lot in the world building as rulers, politicians, etc.

 

To give one example, Durance may have an acolyte with him, that only obeys Durance, because Durance is in his chain of command. You, however, are not in his chain of command. You have to give Durance an order, and then Durance gives his acolyte an order. You cannot skip it by ordering the acolyte around directly. That is a key thing in feudalism and even in some military hierarchies now a days. It provides a world context slightly different than the player going around meeting people and asking them for quests and lore. Of course, usually what happens is that they need to render these extra people as NPCs or followers, with 3d assets, and then the designers wonder where they are going to place them. So they place them back in the stronghold as extra companions, party members, or NPCs for the stronghold, such as what Neverwinter Nights 2 did. Then of course, the player doesn't see or interact with them as much as the party companions get a chance to be interacted with, and they're mostly forgotten in time.

 

Because there's no active human GM in CRPGs, making a deeper world context, like Fallout New Vegas, might make it easier to absorb the lore of the world itself in everyday gameflow interactions. That may require that the designers focus entirely on text content or alternative game content, and stay away from "3d assets" that take up too many resources.

 

People seem to complain about the stash feature mostly because they are bored. The people who like it, like having the other boredom removed, but it is not a "new content" added on top. Just an unfun content removed. Witcher 1-2 seemed to me, to try to add in new and different ways to enjoy game content. With the cards, mini games, and potion alchemy system. It takes additional effort, but people may prefer deeper and newer ways to enjoy content, rather than merely streamlining a boring gameplay method.

 

The problem with designing new gameplay systems is that it often times doesn't work the way it is intended to. Xcom 1/2 main designer lead, had a prototype for an Xcom game to Firaxis, and it failed to pass the check for fun. So they scrapped it and decided to work on something else. Until the main lead had gained some experience, then they went back to another prototype for Xcom, which became the new Xcom. And then the sequel to the new Xcom, that began utilizing new gameplay features like guerilla warfare and concealment. That kind of resource commitment is dangerous for a new game, though. So it makes sense that Pillars is "conservative" to the old CRPG models. Later on, though, the gameplay can become as stale as 4x games, if something doesn't get deeper as a result.

 

 

 

 

While I wouldn't get rid of Edér, I wouldn't mind having a squire or a merchant with a donkey following the party, fleeing from monsters while carrying our stuff and being snarky about it all.

 

 

 

Probably the easiest implementation would be to use the text adventure skit engine, and do a text skit with drawings of All Your Loot. It'll keep track of your scavenging party, their stats, your squires, their stats, and allow you to, merely by choosing options in a text adventure, to get all the trash loot, some bonuses, and coppers. Perhaps if you are in a rush, you only get 50% of the loot value, plus uniques and enchanted stuff. The other stuff is picked up by the Dozens or some scavengers. If you want it "all", then when you transition the Area, the adventure text allows you to pick an additional combat encounter to protect your scavengers or kill off the competition. That'll probably get old over time, but it makes the adventure text game more interesting, and provides some RPG value micro for people interested in the mini game. Since it would have to be a mini game.

 

The executive summary here might be: Gameplay in CRPGs doesn't need to be infinite bag of stash vs encumbrance, just introduce new gameplay flows and methods. Think outside the box. Even if there is a chance for failure.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Ymarsakar